Vineet Bhatia, Chef Patron, Vineet Bhatia London

Vineet Bhatia is a pioneer of Indian cuisine, in 2001 he became the first ever Indian chef to be awarded a Michelin star and is only one of two chefs in the UK to hold stars in more than one country.

• When did Vineet Bhatia London close?
• Who were the new three, two and one star restaurants in the Michelin Guide UK 2018?

Originally wanting to pursue a career as a pilot Vineet eventually found his niche in the kitchen. Inspired by French cuisine, Vineet left Mumbai in 1993 to come to the UK. In 1999 he opened Zaika which led to Vineet becoming the first Indian chef to be awarded a Michelin star. Rasoi followed In 2004 which now has restaurants in Moscow, Mauritius, Dubai and Geneva. In 2009 he won a Michelin star for Rasoi Vineet at the Mandarin Oriental in Geneva making him the second British chef (after Gordon Ramsay no less) to receive stars in more than one country.

Last year Vineet closed Rasoi for refurbishment, reopening as Vineet Bhatia London the newly rejuvenated space was awarded it's first star in the Michelin Guide UK 2018. On Saturday, October 7, 2017 Vineet and his wife Rashima posted a statement on the website to say the restaurant had closed a week after receiving a star in the Michelin Guide.

The Staff Canteen spoke to Vineet about being stifled creatively in India, why he is only serving a 16 course tasting menu at VBL and why he couldn’t possibly choose a favourite ingredient.

Congratulations on your recent win in the Michelin Guide UK 2018, what does it mean to you?

It's very important for us and I'm truly chuffed for the family and for the people that work for us at VBL.  It's a dream and I'm truly touched.

How did you get into the industry?

I got into the industry purely by mistake. I never wanted to be a chef, I actually wanted to be a pilot. But when I went for my exams at the Defence services they said I was too short to be a pilot. I was quite heartbroken and did textile design for five days and couldn’t stand it, so I quit that and went to hotel school.

Why did you leave India to come to the UK?

I was 24 when I left India to come to the UK. I was frustrated in India because I couldn’t grow as a chef, I wasn’t allowed to think outside of the box and I felt stifled. Before coming to the UK in ’93 I had four options, Tokyo, Bangkok, Dubai or London so I chose London. Not because of the food, I only came to London to be near Heathrow airport so I could watch the planes! It was my love of aircraft that made me come to London. And that’s how I began my culinary journey.

How did you and Rashima meet? How challenging is it working together and living together? (Vineet and Rashima co-own Vineet Bhatia)

Rashima and I were an arranged marriage, we made the decision to get married two days after meeting!

Rashima’s background is in pharmaceuticals. As a pharmacist you are very disciplined in your profession so she understood the traditional way of running the business and how to put it together, I’m more of a hardcore artist. I cook. That’s what I do. I can do recipes and menu planning but if you ask me to sit in an office and do paperwork and I struggle. So I think it works quite well because she has her strong points and I have my strong points.

All the staff at VBL have been with us for 12-13 years so what we have is a product that is made out of a lot of passion, love and care and I think because of our husband and wife team the soul is still there after 13 years. So as a family and a couple it gels quite well and it’s easy for us to work together. Our goal has always been to put Indian food at the very highest level so we are very passionate about what we do.

You closed the Michelin starred, Rasoi’s to reopen as Vineet Bhatia London, why?

We chose to close for three months for refurbishment so said let’s open up with a completely new mindset and because of what we had done for those 12 years at Rasoi there were a lot of restaurants in London who were beginning to copy our style. So when we opened again, we didn’t want to call it Rasoi as the whole approach, the food was different and unlike what was served at Rasoi, so I said I’m just going to use my name, Vineet Bhatia London.

When it came to the food we knew we had to go up a couple of notches because it had to be an experience. We had cut down the size of the seats so it’s a lot more intimate and that’s how we came up with the experience menu which is a journey of Indian flavours and spices. The first small dishes you get to try are inspired by my childhood and then you get 4-5 slightly larger portions and then you get desserts so you end up eating 14 or 15 small dishes and a 2-3 hour experience. When you go to any fine dining restaurant you’ll be there for 2-3 hours so you’re spending the same amount of time here. With the size of our restaurant we end up doing just one seating a night and also when you’re paying that sort of money you don’t want to be rushed but savour the experience in a relaxed setting.

VBL is all about the pleasure in dining. There’s no music just the sound of people talking, the crockery, staff and people being cheerful, for me that is music. When I go to a restaurant I want to enjoy the people I am speaking to and most of the time I find restaurants very loud.

How does it feel to be the only Indian chef to hold two Michelin stars?

When I first came to the UK I didn’t know what a Michelin star was. Marco Pierre White used to come to the restaurant regularly to get takeaways, I only came out to see him because he had come in numerous times before. He asked if I was the chef and said he enjoyed my food. Ten days later I read about Marco in the Evening Standard and approached my employer to ask what a Michelin star was. He’s become a friend and comes to all of my restaurants around the world. So for me Michelin actually made my career in the western world.

Awards are important and they’re great to get but it’s not something a chef opens a restaurant for. I haven’t opened up VBL to get a star, I’ve opened up VBL because it’s cuisine that I believe in and it’s something I want to showcase in the best manner, progressive yet staying true to my roots. If we get a star I’d be very happy but if we didn’t I would still happy.

What makes you stand out from other Indian Michelin starred restaurants?

When I came to the UK, I saw that the people cooking Indian food were not actually Indian and didn’t understand Indian food. They were immigrants who had to come to the UK and cooked purely to make a living. But they created a demand for that kind of food so when people like myself came to the UK who were educated in Indian cuisine it came as a shock.

When we opened Zaika in 1999 I had a five course-tasting menu with wine and it was the first anybody had done and everybody laughed. But when people came and enjoyed it, it built my confidence. In 2001 we got the star in the Michelin Guide and that really set us apart because it’s taken very seriously across the world. We left Zaika because we weren’t allowed to push or grow and that’s how Rasoi came about. By the time we had done Zaika there were already people copying what we were doing so they began to understand how to modernise Indian cuisine. When we opened up Rasoi we pushed the food beyond Zaika although in the same style and that continued for 12 glorious years.

Do you have a favourite dish from the tasting menu?

Desserts are my weakness, I don’t have a sweet tooth I have a whole set of sweet teeth! Most Indian restaurants fail dramatically with their desserts and so it is always a conscious effort with me to ensure that this last course ends on a high albeit sweet note and frankly ends up taking most of the diners by surprise.

We launched our dessert book- My Sweet Kitchen in October 2016 and in January 2017 we were informed that it had won in the ‘National Category of Chefs’ at the World Gourmand Cookbook Awards.

Who is your biggest influence?

People tend to ask me who my mentor is but there isn’t any one that has

really influenced my cooking. I draw my inspiration from travels, crockery, guests asking for different things etc. Chefs like Alain Ducasse and Nobu have mastered the art of opening multiple restaurants globally, and transferring their skill and ethos in each one of them. So this is something that I definitely look up to and strive to create with my approach to Indian food and the desire to put it on a global platform.

Do you have a favourite ingredient?

I love all spices because it’s in my DNA, it’s in my blood. If you ask me what I like I love saffron, cumin, fennel, mustard and ginger, without these there wouldn’t be Indian cuisine so to single out an ingredient and say I use this spice the most would be really unfair.

We try to not use any more than three spices in a dish because it will kill everything off. Sometimes you just need one spice for a dish because that flavour will sing without adding anything else but then sometimes you have to add a couple to get the best out of them. So without spices I think I would be absolutely useless.