For Rs 50,000 a meal, Chef Gaggan Anand brings a fun (not fine) dining experience in Delhi

Rs 50,000 with alcohol and Rs 40,000 without alcohol. These are the two options available for a single meal at the Michelin-star chef Gaggan Anand’s new residency at Delhi’s Hyatt Regency. 

The residency started at the Hyatt on February 18, and will keep on serving its wealthy clients until March 14.

“It has been a very nice response so far. We’ve been having sold-out days,” says Pawan Singh who currently serves as Assistant Manager at the hotel behind the current residency. 

While its lofty prices might make headlines, the selling point of this entire culinary experience is, of course, Gaggan Anand himself. Even though Anand was born in Kolkata, he moved to Bangkok in 2007 and this is where he found his claim to fame, thanks to a top-rated fine dining establishment simply called Gaggan. 

Being in business for less than a decade, Gaggan still emerged as a runaway hit on the Asian and global culinary scene earning two Michelin stars in the process. 

Being the posterchild of progressive Indian cuisine for quite some time now, Anand opened his eponymous restaurant back in 2010. The courses included familiar Indian dishes with Anand’s own spin to it including some local favourites like dahi chaat, a Bengali-style onion pakoda (fritters), vada pav, golgappa, idli with gunpowder, and so on.  

It’s not just his food and restaurants that attract the attention; it’s his own unabashedly “rude” personality. While it’s almost a stereotype at this point to look at a chef as an arrogant and condescending copy of Gordon Ramsay (that might explain Ralph Fiennes’ caricaturish chef in The Menu), Anand himself seems to love the negative headlines. A trip to his official website can tell you that. 

ALSO READ | The Menu Review: Ralph Fiennes leaves you unsettled in witty culinary satire

While chefs and restaurateurs would love to feature only the reviews and comments that shower praises on their establishments, Anand features satirically self-deprecatory comments from his celebrity friends. 

So, if Ed Sheeran writes, “...when I went to his restaurant it was the best meal and food experience of my life so far. Shame he’s such a c**t”, the claim is also supported by Spanish chef David Muñoz saying, 

All jokes aside, Anand is indeed one of the few chefs who have managed to take the Indian platter on a global level. His featured appearances on Netflix’s Chef’s Table and even an episode of Somebody Feed Phil bear further testimony to this.

And if you’re too lazy to go through the publications and food critics that go ga-ga over him, Spanish chef Joan Roca’s views on him perhaps sum up the hype best, 

Restaurant magazine, which has had a Biblical reputation within the global food culture, ranked Gaggan as 17th in its The World’s Best 50 Restaurants list of 2014 along with regular mentions as Thailand and Asia’s best restaurant in the subsequent years. 

Anand’s money-making machine had to unfortunately shut its doors in 2019 due to conflicts with shareholders. A deeper perspective in the entire issue can be understood from the 45-year-old’s Instagram post from that time explaining how he received a legal notice from one of the shareholders and how he along with his team of “65 rebels” had to resign. 

But as is evident from the currently high-priced residency in Delhi, Anand continues working thanks to another exclusive, top-rated joint at Bangkok, this time carrying his full name. The restaurant known as Gaggan Anand opened in 2019 and while there were setbacks and pandemic-induced closures, the progressive Indian maestro continues overseeing its operations for sold-out months. 

“He’s bringing that Bangkok experience here for the folks in Delhi,” adds Hyatt’s Singh, who mentions that the current residency comprises a 25-course meal that is brought to life by Anand’s team of 18 members (out of the 35 that handle the affairs of the Bangkok restaurant). 

Even though the cuisine offered is Indian and largely drawn from the Bangkok establishment, Singh adds that this residency will also be an experiment of sorts, hopefully for more future projects by the chef in his native country. When asked if this hints at India getting its very own fully-functional Gaggan Anand restaurant, Singh preferred keeping mum.

But when asked if the 20-day residency is a fine dining experience, Singh begs to differ. He calls it “a fun dining experience” rather, adding that the customers would have more fun with Anand’s experiments with Indian cuisine rather than just be in awe of the finer details. 

Perhaps Gaggan Anand’s own website sheds more light on this concept of fun dining. 

Well, money can’t buy you love but it can definitely be the only thing that would buy you a plate at his (sold out as of now) residency!