Too few cooks are spoiling our broth

You may say your eating-out habits are nobody’s business, but what do you know? The increasing appetite of Indians for aglio et olio with handmade spaghetti, delicate, soup-filled dimsums and even a paupiette of black cod has the hospitality industry in a mad scramble for chefs and cooks who can suitably turn out Spanish, French, Italian and Japanese dishes, among others.

With international food chains spreading across the country and five-star hotels betting their rupee and reputation on signature restaurants, there are hundreds of vacancies in the kitchen.

The demand-supply mismatch is not surprising in a country where bawarchi was hardly celebrated: cooking was disparaged as far too domestic, seldom figuring in the carefully created hierarchy of careers for the longest time.

India has been caught unprepared to meet this requirement of talent. So, poaching is not just a favoured cooking technique but an essential HR game.

When the golden age of restaurants is losing its sheen in the West, with restaurateurs complaining that customers have stopped ordering bottles of wine even in Spain — then the land of gastro chic, now the ground zero of recession — perhaps it is time the Michelin-star-spangled chefs looked to India for a stimulus package. And also for India to have its chefs ready before ordering its caramel parfait.