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None of this would have happenedwithout Nobu. By now most foodiesknow the story of Nobu Matsuhisa, aJapanese chef who went to Peru.While there, he was fascinated by the local cuisine and bythe way in which Peru’s large Japanese community hadadapted its own cuisine to include spicy Peruvian flavours.Nobu ended up in Los Angeles where he first attempted tomerge Japanese and Peruvian influences at a restaurantcalled Matsuhisa.

The success of Matsuhisa attracted Robert De Niro, who thought that Nobu could do betterthan a mere sushi bar in LA. At the time, De Niro had just opened the Tribeca Grill in New Yorkwith restaurateur Drew Nieporent and he persuaded Nobu to come to New York to open a newrestaurant. Initially, Matsuhisa was unreceptive to Nierporent’s suggestions (big sharing plates forthe whole table, no overly Japanese designs like Shoji screens or tatami rooms, a busy bar etc)but when he finally agreed, De Niro and Nieporent had helped create a phenomenon – themodern Japanese restaurant – taking a cuisine that was seen as elitist, flavourless andcomplicated and making it hip and trendy while still preserving the excellence of the food. Nobu and Nieporent went on to open two more restaurants in New York and one in London andNobu opened another two dozen branches all over the world without Nieporent. In the process, the trio of Nobu, De Niro and Nieporent changed all the rules. Rare is thesuccessful Japanese restaurant outside Japan that does not owe something to this trio either interms of the food or the look. And then, there are the restaurants descended from Nobu, many ofthem opened by people who worked with Nobu or at one of his places: Rainer Becker’s manyZumas, Masaharu Morimoto’s restaurants (including the two Indian Wasabis), Akira Back’s placein Las Vegas (and the one in Delhi) and so many more. It is hard to believe that the first Nobu inNew York opened only 10 years ago. Its influence has been Godzilla-like in its scope and power. The Chinese have lacked a Nobu. There have been attempts at creating a modern Chinesecuisine but there has been no one template. An early pioneer was chef Susur Lee who created anew kind of Chinese food in North America, but though Lee has become famous withappearances on such shows as Top Chef, he has not created a new style of Chinese cooking.I’ve eaten his food in Singapore at restaurants owned by Andrew Tjioe of the TungLok group andthough I thought it was terrific, it has never had the sort of influence that Nobu had on Japanesefood. If there is a Nobu-type figure in the Chinese food scene then that honour should go to Alan Yau.Born in Hong Kong but brought up in England, Yau had many successful restaurant projects inLondon (Wagamama is still the best known) when the management of the Mandarin OrientalHotel in London called him and asked if he could create a Chinese Nobu on the ground floor of

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Vikramjit Roy is the brightest and most creative chef of his generation

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10/8/2014 Vir Sanghvi

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"They have paired Roy with Anurodh Samal, one of thechain’s best restaurant managers and the result is an

absolute triumph: easily the best modern Orientalrestaurant in India..."

the hotel. The project went nowhere (Dinner by Heston Blumenthal now occupies that space) but Yauwas fascinated by the concept. He rented a basement site (a former car park), hired a Frenchdesigner (Christian Liaigre) and opened a new kind of dark, sexy, glamorous Chinese restaurantcalled Hakkasan in 2001. The food was not regional Chinese but fancy and modern (many of hiscooks were not from Hong Kong or the mainland but overseas Chinese from Malaysia andSingapore) with light flavours. Three years later, Yau opened Yauatcha, his version of a dim sumhouse. Both restaurants have been widely copied: it is hard to find an upmarket Chinese restaurantanywhere in the western world that does not owe a debt to the Hakkasan formula. Yau sold out toan Arab fund which has opened branches of Hakkasan and Yauatcha all over the world (includingIndia) but he is back in the game with new restaurants in Hong Kong and London. In India, we have felt the impact ofNobu (who has negotiated with manyIndian partners and yet, never openedhere) because of Wasabi, Akira Backand many local rip-offs. But modernChinese has never really caught onhere. When Delhi’s Hyatt Regency opened the excellent China Kitchen, it went with a Singaporeconsultant (the Hyatt’s chef Jack) and a team of stony-faced cooks from the mainland. Hakkasanremains a glamorous Bombay nightspot but its cuisine has not been copied by the city’s otherrestaurants and though the three Yauatchas (Bombay, Bangalore and Delhi) are hugesuccesses, they exist in a bubble. Perhaps what we needed was a modern Chinese restaurant that drew from the Nobus and theHakkasans but also picked up other influences from the rest of Asia. Of all the Indian chains, itwas ITC, with no great reputation for Chinese food, that took the plunge with its Pan Asian inChennai. Drawing on the talents of Vikramjit Roy, a brilliant young chef who had served his timeat the Taj’s Wasabi, the Chennai Pan Asian was a huge breakthrough, serving the sort of creativeOriental food that we’d never before seen in India. More surprisingly, despite Roy’s refusal tocompromise on the authenticity of his flavours, it became a huge commercial success inconservative Chennai. Now ITC has gambled by designing an entire restaurant, Tian, at the Maurya around Roy’scuisine. They have paired Roy with Anurodh Samal, one of the chain’s best restaurant managersand the result is an absolute triumph: easily the best modern Oriental restaurant in India, moreambitious than either China Kitchen or Wasabi and more exciting. I’ve been there twice: the first doesn’t count because it was a pre-opening dinner hosted byKapil Sekhri of Fratelli (whose wines went perfectly with the food) and both ITC’s food-guruGautam Anand and the Maurya’s go-getting general manager Anil Chaddha were in attendance.But just after Tian’s soft opening a week or so ago, I strolled in and ordered at random from themenu. My second meal at Tian was exceptional; probably the best meal I’ve had in Delhi this year.Roy is big on presentation and drama; there is so much smoke surrounding his plates that I wasmoved to joke that ITC – home of the dedicated smoker – is his natural habitat. But as somebodywho gets tired very quickly of gimmicks, stunts and presentation, I shunned the fancy dishes andordered the relatively simple creations. They were uniformly outstanding. Chicken rendang came on a skewer, the rendang flavourinfused into the chicken; a melt-in-the-mouth pork kakuni was also arranged on a stick; Singaporechilli crab was made with soft shell crab, an inauthentic touch that actually made it easier to eat, asimple stir-fry of chicken with chilli and ginger was terrific, a Thai red curry of duck was up toAnanda Solomon standards; the pork belly was soft and yielding; a carpaccio of duck was likenothing I’ve had before, and the little baked chicken puffs were even better than the Yauatchaversion. There were fancy dishes too – foie gras parfait, truffles, etc – but I’ll judge the restauranton the straightforward stuff. And it was brilliant. This is not really Chinese food because Roy’s influences come from Japan, Thailand,Indonesia, Korea and many other places. But it is a more creative cuisine than, say, Morimoto’soriginal Wasabi menu (the version they serve in India is still largely stolen from Nobu). One wayof looking at it would be to see it as an Asian’s re-imagining of the cuisine of his continent. You’llfind all the tricks of molecular gastronomy should you want them. But this is not food full ofgimmicks. This is food you can go back and eat again and again without being disappointed. I wrote many years ago that Manish Mehrotra was a genius; easily the best chef of thisgeneration. I think time has borne me out on that one. So I’ll stick my neck out again and make anextravagant claim: Vikramjit Roy is the next Manish; the brightest and most creative chef of hisgeneration.

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