Cooking for long has been an invisible occupation, with chefs rarely getting acknowledgment for their work. Due to this, many youngsters who do have the potential, possibly ignore cooking as a career option. This is especially true in India. For example, the Michelin Star rating has recognised chefs and restaurants for their quality all around the globe, but the rating guide is not present in India, which means that any aspiring chefs here have to go abroad in order to be featured in the coveted rating guide. However, the times are now changing. “For years, when guests entered a hotel or a restaurant, the chef was not even allowed to come out to the dining room and meet the guests. It was always the restaurant manager or the owner who would come out. Things are finally changing where chefs are coming out. People know who’s actually cooking their food,” Culinary Culture Chairman Raaj Sanghvi told Financial Express Online.
To recognise the efforts put in by chefs, and chefs alone – not the hotel or the restaurant – the Culinary Culture launched FoodSuperstar, the first and one-of-a-kind awards platform in India meant to celebrate the achievements of chefs. In 2022, FoodSuperstar awarded Chef Dane Fernandez with the Young Chef award. “Dane became the executive chef at the St Regis hotel of Mumbai under the Marriott group at the age of 30. Chefs have to work for three or four decades before they reach the level of executive chefs. While Dane is not the youngest executive chef in India, he is distinguished because he became the executive chef of such an important hotel at a young age and he has mastered different cuisines, including Goan, Italian, French, and Spanish,” Sanghvi said.
Speaking to financialexpress.com, Chef Dane talks about the importance of having youth in the culinary world and things young chefs must keep in mind. Edited excerpts:
How do you feel about FoodSuperstars celebrating chefs, and recognising you with the Young Chef award?
I think it’s a great platform to recognise chefs. I don’t think anybody else in India probably has been doing something like this and I feel absolutely elated. In your daily operations, you don’t come to know that there are people who are watching you and your work. So it feels really good to be recognised.
In India, chefs have largely been out of the limelight, apart from a few who took to TV. So, how important is it that chefs are recognised?
I think the hospitality scene in India is completely changing from what we were probably 10 years back when I just started. Chefs were not known. It was, yes, a very skilled labour, but at the same time, they were never known widely. This change, I believe, has to do more with the millennials and their travel and exploration. Besides, with social media being so much vogue now, chefs also have started posting about their creations and insights into what they do and people are kind of appreciating that.
What is the importance of having youth in the culinary arts?
It’s an important balance that you should hold when it comes to youth as well as experience. Youth brings in innovation. Youth brings in excitement. Youth brings in a lot of flair to what you do. But at the same time, experience brings in a lot of humility into the youth and also keeps them absolutely grounded and on the path to do the right thing.
What kind of innovations have young chefs brought in and what else can you look at in terms of innovation?
By youth and innovation, I mean newer techniques. A classic dish, say hypothetically, just a butter chicken, has been elevated by the youth. The kind of ingredients that are available in today’s day and age and the kind of exposure that youth has got with ingredients to work with is vast. Our experience generation has got a huge gap and I think that youth kind of bridge that. The youth follow thousands of chefs on social media and see them doing crazy things and experimenting with quality ingredients. I think that’s a great mix.
How is cooking or culinary arts as a career?
A decade ago, probably, people would look towards hotel management and culinary arts if they didn’t fare well in their 12th. Today, people can proudly look at this as a career option and flourish into it. it is even possible that in the next five or 10 years, we might have the Michelin guide in India. The kind of food that India has seen grow over the past five to six years is enormous. It’s a great change to the Indian culinary culture. We are also getting recognised worldwide for the food that we prepare. So it’s a great career option if you ask me.
What are the biggest barriers that young chefs can face?
If there would be one advice that I would give to youngsters, it would be to be really strong on their basics. Everything revolves around these basics. I mean chefs can’t create, say, a fantastic sauce if they don’t know what their mother sauces are.