“Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! That is all you should expect before you visit Gaggan,” said Gaggan Anand, the man behind his eponymous restaurant in Bangkok which has secured the third spot in the list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants and is crowned as the best restaurant in Thailand.
While it is a slip of two places from last year, when the restaurant secured the top spot, it is a continuation of the restaurant’s streak of being among the top 5. After topping the list last year, the star chef spoke to Outlook Traveller Eats and said, “To everyone who announced the end of Gaggan, this award is here to say that Gaggan is back, or maybe he never left.”
Gaggan topped the list from 2015 to 2018 and it was only after a 7 year hiatus that he could reclaim it. This year, even though the restaurant has gone down by two places on the overall list, ranking No. 3, it remains the best restaurant in Thailand. Which makes one thing clear, Gaggan can’t leave a contest without being on top—if not on one list, then probably on another.
An Introduction To Gaggan: The Man Behind The Madness
Gaggan grew up in Calcutta. Humble beginnings and two incredible chef parents shaped the course of his cooking journey. “Like most children, my introduction to cooking was in my mother’s kitchen. I enjoyed running errands and hosting people at home,” reminisced one of the world’s most talked about chefs.
According to him, kitchens can be very aggressive spaces, and chefs, very horrible creatures. “If there is one thing that I inherited from “Ma,” it was the right attitude and temperament of being in the kitchen,” said Gaggan.
“For you to be a junior chef or even an intern at Gaggan, we must first become friends. Not that I am nepotistic, but you must match my energy,” he added.
After graduating from the Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology (IHMCT) in Trivandrum, the chef spent 12 years honing his cooking skills before he opened Gaggan, his first restaurant in Bangkok. Fallout with business partners and a troubled marriage were only some of the many hiccups he faced through his journey of becoming the best.
Revolutionary, Rebellious, And Unapologetic
When I asked Gaggan to define his cooking journey, he was quick to use two words: “Evolutionary and rebellious.” From learning how to hold a knife and chopping onions to taking cooking classes from street vendors and chaat walas, and finally channelling his imagination into dishes, cooking, for Gaggan, became meditative.
For him, Gaggan is an institution. “Like you don’t build a city in a day, you don’t build a restaurant too. I took twelve years to build mine,” he added.
When you enter Gaggan, you will be met with a neon signage that reads, “Be a rebel.” It speaks volumes about not only him but also about his craft. “Everything at Gaggan is rebellious. It is against the norm. The world of cooking is a box, and we are out of the box,” said the chef.
“What makes you rebellious?” I decided to dig deeper.
“At Gaggan, it’s Gaggan’s show, my show. You are not coming for a meal but for a food opera and a theatrical performance. There are rules at my restaurant and the diners must take them very seriously.”
No flashlights, don’t hold hands since food should occupy your fingers, don’t talk when Gaggan and his troupe are on a roll, out of the 25 courses, you must eat at least 22 by hand, and this is only a fraction of how long the list is.
“A principal, are you? This sounds like a classroom,” I daringly remarked.
“Probably a top notch culinary school is what you could call it,” he laughed, “but no, it is like a tennis match where one cannot shout or talk while watching it. Or maybe a Green Day concert where you cannot and should not listen to Justin Bieber. If Bieber is who you want to listen to, then why would you end up at a Green Day concert?” he asked.
A pause… I was yet to make sense of this.
“Similarly, if you don’t want to abide by my rules, you should simply not come to my restaurant,” he added without even the slightest hesitation.
Brave! I thought to myself. And why not? He has achieved all the reasons to be this unapologetic.
I think he gauged my surprise, and clarified that he was not against people who demand the usual dining experience, but “Gaggan is not for them.”
“They can dine at Ms. Maria and Mr. Singh or Gaggan at Louis Vuitton, where you can find a slice of Gaggan minus the madness,” he suggested. On this year’s list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, the former is ranked at No. 27 and the latter at No. 8.
Unapologetic was the other word he used for him. I can strongly attest to that. And it reflects in the way he talks, cooks, and serves. “At Gaggan, your dietary needs and religious beliefs will be well taken care of. We cater to both vegetarians and meat eaters. But we don’t cater to vegans because I don’t believe in that b***s*it,” he added.
He also makes sure that he makes his indifference apparent to the entitled and rich who think that throwing tantrums about being disallowed to choose their wine is normal. “There is one ticket, one price, and one wine. Avail if you want to. Period.”
Gaggan For A Reason
My introduction to Gaggan was with Chef’s Table on Netflix. It was refreshing to spot the story of an Indian among six other global chefs. The show will tell you how his dishes are not the best because they taste well, but because each is prepared and executed with a close eye for detail. From technique, texture, temperature, lighting, music, colour of the scene, environment, and even manner of eating, he curates everything. An actor-cum-director, and an impeccable one at that.
Gaggan, where the lines between art, storytelling, and food blur, to create a one-of-a-kind, sensory experience for the diners, is only a 14-seater space. They do eight services a week and have over 30 servers (that is two servers per seat!).
The restaurant serves 25 courses, or “acts,” as Gaggan likes to call them. “Five courses are from India, where my heart is, five from Japan, where my art is, five courses from Thailand, where my soul is, and the remaining five courses involve communal eating.”
Taking inspiration from Indian ways of eating kachori aloo with jalebi, and chole puri with halwa, Gaggan decided to follow up every course with a sweet dish.
Things at Gaggan are never straightforward. “We serve the rat brain as one of our courses. The catch is that you don’t know whether it is an actual rat or a message to everyone who brings the sustainability s**t to Bangkok, where not even our tap water is drinkable,” his decibel rose.
I, the interviewer was utterly confused. In a world, where everyone in the food world is encouraging sustainable use of ingredients, there is a chef who wants to fight it with a rodent, nose to tail!
“For those who demand 0 km ingredients, I like to trap the rats of our neighbourhood because that is the only thing you will find in our vicinity,” Gaggan said. At one point, they served three courses with rats: rat sauté, soup, and the brain. But was it really a rat or only a message, he did not reveal.
It took me long before I could crawl out of the rat brain confusion, so I asked, “Is this a prank or a surprise?”
He laughed and said nothing.
When you are interviewing a figure like Gaggan, it’s rather tough to rest your thoughts on a single response. However, I constantly thought about how most of his dishes had to be eaten with hands instead of cutlery. Something quite unconventional to the fine dining space like his. “What is your issue with cutlery?” was my very direct question.
“Have you ever eaten at a Langar?” he asked back… I had never. “On one of my travels to Amritsar in 2001, I raised my plate to be served a chapati. The sardarji asked me to take it in my hand. Why? Because when one begs for food, is when they realise its worth,” Gaggan said.
He believes that eating with the hands humbles a person and allows them to respect the food before and realise the effort that has gone into preparing it.
He recommends that people visit his restaurant with an open heart, leaving behind the entitlement that follows them everywhere—“Your job is to come and enjoy my concert. I am the main character at Gaggan. Not you.”
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