29-01-2018
Using a torch, Gaggan Anand burns banana leaves. We’re halfway down the 25-course tasting menu that every night he serves at his restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, number 7 in the World's 50 Best Restaurant. The establishment will close in 2020 and reopen in 2021 in Fukuoka, Japan. Gaggan will speak at Identità Milano, on Sunday 4th March, at 11.30 am in the Auditorium
The sign appearing on Soi Langsuan in Bangkok, the little road where you can find restaurant Gaggan and, in front of it, the new-born Gaa, same ownership
The entrance to the restaurant, which recently got the second Michelin star. It’s open only in the evening. There are 65 people here who serve 100 clients daily, divided into two shifts (photo from themalaymailonline.com)
Gaggan’s famous emoji menu: "We first create the dish, then we sum it up with an emoji", he points out (photo from Andershusa/Instagram)
1 Pink elderflower and watermelon The tasting menu starts with the notes of the Foo Fighters. The entire first part of the menu is to be eaten with your hands: "This is how it works in India", he explains. First dish: a pearl among elderberry flowers and watermelon in an edible oyster shell. A debut to rinse the palate
2 Yogurt Explosion Gaggan’s most famous dish. It’s the result of his early internship at elBulli in Roses, Catalonia. "If Ferran Adrià has had Spanish people accept a spherified olives", he says, "why shouldn’t I do the same with an emblem of India?". The spherified yogurt is made with low fat yogurt dipped in a sodium alginate
3 Lick it up. Mushroom peas With "Lick it up", a hit from the Eighties by Kiss playing in the background, they serve this dish which you must hold with both hands and lick. The sauces, from bottom to top, in "licking order ": tomato, dehydrated mushrooms and mashed green chickpeas. On top, shaved truffle. "Music, words, food. This is how we represent lightness"
Gaggan holds a cone
4 Tom Yum Kung This is his version of Tom Yam (or Yum), a popular Thai soup. It’s a cold purée of tom yam served in crispy rice paper with a head of scampi to add flavour. It’s a sort of prawn cocktail in the shape of a cone
5 Goat brain, flower power A cracker of goat brain ("to us Indians, it’s like foie gras", beams Gaggan) and rice flour. It is served to women first, playing with the similar sounds of flour and flower
6 Eggplant cookie A cookie of aubergine, a sandwich the size of a coin, held together thanks to some onion chutney. "Out of 20, in Asia ingredients are usually worth 5, technique 15. With this dish I wanted to go in the opposite direction, return to Western minimalism with a universal emblem, that is to say aubergines. It’s a recent dish, which portraits the restaurant as it is now"
7 Chilly bon bon Chilli pepper spheres. "Chocolates" filled with cumin, chilli pepper, ginger, and other spices. "In India there are four degrees of spiciness: hot, hotter, very hot and hell". The bon bon was mildly hot
8 Idly Sambar Idly Sambar is a Tamil recipe, from the south of India: vegetable stew, tamarind and varying spices. "The world can be divided into two: those who eat rice, and those who eat bread. In this case, the base is bread made of fermented rice"
9 Banana chicken liver "My daughter is one year and a half old. She’s difficult when it comes to eating. Give this combination to your children and they’ll be happy"
10 Fish Granola Granola with fried seabass, walnuts and cheese cream
11 Gin tonic cucumber uni Sea urchin cones, temaki, key lime and Indian tonic water. "This dish is the result of my trips to Japan: I went there 74 times only in the last couple of years. It has sea urchins from Hokkaido, in the north. In India we never eat raw food". The nori seaweed is made with dill
The selection of sea urchins from Hokkaido. "It’s worth its weight in gold", sighs Gaggan
12 Chutoro sushi This is Gaggan’s homage to Tuna nigiri, an emblem of his future homeland (in 2021 after closing in Bangkok he’ll open a completely different restaurant in Fukuoka, Japan). Chutoro is a medium-fat tuna. In this case it is caramelised, adding a little emulsion of yuzu on top. The interesting part is below: it’s not rice, but a meringue made of all the ingredients used in sushi, that is to say vinegar, rice, sugar. "Sushi is a one way trip. You’ll never return. Nobody told me how to make it. This dish is a new take on a very personal memory"
13 Foie gras yuzu carrot Carrot tartelette filled with foie gras. There’s no sweat on the hand: before the tasting they spray yuzu on the palm
Recipe number 14, another excursus between Japan and India
The dish is finished at the table
Whisking the mixture
14 Green vegetable matcha Green apple gazpacho, cucumber and matcha tea. "I first fell in love with Japan thanks to tea. This looks like Japan but tastes of India and represents Gaggan"
15 Pork Vindaloo Vindaloo is a recipe from Goa, the Portuguese feud in west India. It’s pork, seasoned with garlic, vinegar and hot chilli pepper. In this case the fried texture is super-crispy, enriched with Japanese mustard which gives value to the Iberian pig marinated in wine and spices
New dishing out at the Chef's Table
16 Scallop uncooked curry Scallops with green chilli, fried shallot and coconut ice cream. A “fake-curry ". The dish is served with a complaint about the past: "It’s the British who brought curry. It’s not part of our heritage, just like Chicken tikka masala. For me curry is a universal flavour, suitable for everything"
You can enrich the curry with two chilli sauces: the green, sweeter one (make love) or the red hot one (sex). "I come front the country that invented Kamasutra"
17 Sheek Kebab A mini-sausage that’s a new take on a great Indian classic, sheek kebab. "The sausage is a clear proof of the huge influence that Chinese and Indian cuisine have had on the West. I bought this one from the market, today, and added galang and ginger. (In the photo, you can see the vegetarian version to the right)
18 Thai Green Curry A crispy wafer made with dehydrated chicken skin with coriander sauce, in a miniaturised version of the traditional Thai green curry. In this case too, the version on the right is vegetarian
Gaggan gets a torch and starts to caramelise the banana leaves
The banana leaf is burning...
19 Seabass Bengali Mustard ...inside there’s a filet of smoked sea bass with mildly hot Bengali mustard. "It’s my oldest recipe, which is based on the ancestral gesture of man discovering fire. Before I die, I want to eat this"
20 Charcoal lotus stem Fried aubergine with a stalk of lotus inside. It’s a total black fried snack, which looks similar to charcoal
21 Lobster dosa Dosa (rice batter) with open lobster, in Indian sauce. You have to close it and eat it like a taco
The quotation of Stéphane Mallarmé
22 Beetroot rose Beetroot rose with Tonka bean. A pre-dessert. "Kiss from a rose" by Seal starts in the background
23 Milk cake, Riesling Muscat A dish for a toast, shaped like the traditional Chinese moon cake. It is filled with Riesling ice cream, which is rather pleasant and sour. "Milk is the most important ingredient we have. In Thailand it’s not very good but we tolerate it"
24 Lemon cheesecake Lemon cheesecake ice cream on a stick. "Why reproduce the Minions? Because food must be fun"
Ultimo atto...
25 Mango Saffron Ghewar Once you open the box, there’s ghewar, a traditional cake from Rajasthan, made with flour and sugar syrup. It can include almonds, pistachios, cardamom. In our case, mango and saffron. A delicious ending, with no excessive sweetness. It’s the last dish, the meal ends while "Imagine" by John Lennon is playing
The 8 wines served by Serbian sommelier Vladimir Kojic, a journey through the great natural wines of Europe (and a sake)
After compiling the profile of the galaxy that Gaggan is building, we focus on the meal that the Indian, number one in Asia for the past 3 years, serves daily at his restaurants above Lumphini Park, in the heart of Bangkok. In 2010, Gaggan Anand colonised a beautiful wood building with just one goal: redeem Indian cuisine and the social image of Indian chefs around the world. «When they said», he’s been repeating for years, «that our tradition is too poor to aim for the top in fine dining, I got completely pissed off». It is to accomplish this mission that he did an internship at El Bulli in 2009: «Ferran Adrià changed my life and my approach to the profession», he says. You can clearly notice this tecno-emotional heritage in the current menu, a breath-taking sequence of 25 bulli-style dishes: you find the entertaining side (loud music from Marshall amplifiers) which is never idle, unusual texture explorations, a large use of maltodextrins, spherifications and alginates and a well-designed sequence of growing intensity. It’s like staying in Sitges 6 years after it closed, but a continent apart. Of course, the main characters in our films change. When you don’t spherify olives nor cavialise any ingredients, but change the look of traditional Indian recipes such as idly sambhar, vindaloo, samosa, sheek kebab… [details in the photo gallery]. «It’s a heritage unexplored in fine dining», he says with pride, «hundreds of reinterpreted recipes based on at least 36 different traditions, from the very damp Tamil Nadu in the south, to the peaks of Himalaya, thousands of kilometres to the north».
Gaggan Anand is also a great cook when it comes to traditional Indian cuisine. The proof is on this table. Left to right, clockwise: poppadum, rice, coconut chutney, fried lentil doughnuts, fish curry, curdled rice
Translated into English by Slawka G. Scarso See also The Gaggan galaxy by Gabriele Zanatta
Gabriele Zanatta’s opinion: on establishments, chefs and trends in Italy and the world
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born in Milan, 1973, freelance journalist, coordinator of Identità Golose World restaurant guidebook since 2007, he is a contributor for several magazines and teaches History of gastronomy and Culinary global trends into universities and institutes. twitter @gabrielezanatt instagram @gabrielezanatt