How smart chefs are first wooing the mind, then the palate

A chef is expected to be many things these days: artist, manager, showman and financial controller. What many don’t realise is that they have to be psychologists too, peering into the minds of their guests to know which part of the brain to stimulate, not just the tastebuds. “We eat first with our eyes,” goes the axiom; but actually we taste first with our minds.

Many offer wisdom on how to tempt diners. Use exotic words and descriptive adjectives in menus to underline authenticity, they say, ensure prices end with a .99 and plates are of the right size so there’s a perception of value for money.

But at the end of the day, people will come—and come back—if they like the food itself. So diners have to be understood.


Back in 2011, the legendary chef Alain Passard unveiled his vegetarian cuisine to Delhi’s elite at a private dinner by a noted wine doyen. But most of the invitees were curiously underwhelmed even after a 7-course extravaganza, though they were no strangers to his famous Parisian restaurant, L’Arpege. So what happened in Delhi? The short answer: no carbs.

And that, as the equally legendary food professional Camellia Panjabi would have told him, just doesn’t work in India. A typical thali epitomises what desi diners generally look for: lots of carbs (a central mound of rice or rotis) and smaller portions of proteins (in bowls). Indians instinctively love Chinese and Italian food precisely because they echo that ethos.

The challenge then, is to tempt this palate and yet push culinary boundaries. Chefs are portrayed as eccentric and egotistical artistes, whose sacrosanct canvas is a plate. But they cannot afford to disregard their diners’ hardwired preferences altogether. So their idea is not to coerce or capitulate, but coax. And for that, chefs have to rely on their instincts and experience.

Chef Manish Mehrotra, who has taken the wildly successful Indian Accent from Delhi to New York and London, had to do a lot of strategising. “All diners want some degree of familiarity, especially since they are literally putting a fair bit of their money on the line for the experience. So we have to make efforts to meet their expectations at least part of the way.”

“No one will accept totally unfamiliar flavours,” agrees Chef Andrew Wong, whose eponymous A Wong in London got its first Michelin star in 2017. He took a leap of faith and opened Baoshuan at The Oberoi New Delhi this year, and has had a mixed reaction to his cutting-edge Chinese cuisine. But that has given him an invaluable insight into the Indian diners’ minds.

Interestingly, these two chefs who ventured in opposite directions with their restaurants and had to figure out very different markets, pooled their experiences and now follow a common rule of thumb: offer at least one identifiably familiar flavour in one dish and diners will be willing to accept all the other new ones. It’s an acceptable and pragmatic compromise.

But chefs have to know when and what to cede and to what extent. Says Chef Sriram Aylur, who created and has helmed the Michelin starred Quilon restaurant at the Taj property in London for 19 years, “There is a process of initiation for both chef and diner. Cuisine has to be carefully calibrated, an environment has to be created so that diners can appreciate what is offered.”

There, Aylur aptly mentions the pioneering work being done by his friend Charles Spence, renowned professor of experimental psychology at Oxford University.

Not many realise, as Dr Spence’s research has shown, that lighting, the shape of plates and even music impacts a diner’s appreciation and perception of food. At Quilon, incidentally, even the music has been specially composed by Hariharan to complement its southern cuisine. However, food is the real test and it requires a long process of trial and error for the chefs, of study and adjustment without forsaking their basic oeuvre. As Aylur points out, even Gaggan Anand’s madly experimental cuisine in Bangkok is securely anchored in his own background—and experience of the market. Customer is king but a chef has to find a balance.

Chinese food for most Indians, for example, is usually all about chicken and vegetables drenched in a viscous, spicy sauce. And as chefs Mehrotra and Aylur affirm, Indian food is also hamstrung by preconceptions among diners of diverse nationalities—including Indian!

“Indian food is associated with curry bowls, sharing dishes and a big naan,” chuckles Mehrotra. Concurs Aylur, “No matter how much we talked about Quilon being southern, coastal, all diners heard was ‘Indian’ and looked for biryani and paranthas in our menu!” Even expectations of spice and heat differ, with non-Indians tolerating chillies more than masala.

But the solution is not to fall back on templates. Moplah biryani and Malabar parota that Chef Aylur offers at Quilon have just the right mix of familiarity and novelty for the sophisticated Londoner seeking Indian food. Considering that the US palate for Indian food is different from London, Chef Mehrotra has tweaked the Indian Accent menu accordingly.

Ditto at Baoshuan where, realising the Delhiites’ preference for chicken, Chef Wong has refashioned his acclaimed version of the classic pork Shanghai soup dumpling (xiaolong bao) in a poultry avatar. And if there anyone detects even a light viscosity in the sauces of the dishes that will debut in the menu there soon, it will also probably be a nod to that Indian palate!

Every culture, even every city has its own shibboleths, some old, some new. If Wong (and many foreign chefs before him) have realised Delhi’s fervent devotion to chicken, Mehrotra mentions the “gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free” predilection of New Yorkers. And Aylur has figured out that a light hand with spices is necessary in London, but not necessarily chilli.

So a successful chef’s “whites” are as much a psychologist’s lab jacket as a food professional’s uniform.