There is a story Vikas Khanna tells me over dinner at his Dubai restaurant, Junoon, which may just be one of the sweetest and somehow most moving tales you will ever hear.
Shortly after having the honour of cooking for US President Barack Obama in 2012, he phoned his grandmother back home in India to share the news. She was the woman, after all, who had first taught him his way round a kitchen. She had supported his earliest food business, a catering company specialising in fried bread and chickpeas, which he opened at just 16.
And she had watched with pride as his career took him from the small city of Amritsar, in the northern Indian state of Punjab, and into the stratosphere; running an award-winning restaurant in New York, finding TV fame as host of Masterchef India, and penning a bunch of bestselling books.
Except she was 94 now, and hard of hearing, while the phone line across the continents kept crackling.
“I was so excited to tell her but I remember I mentioned it was night where I was and she didn’t understand why and I spent five minutes trying to explain the time difference to her,” recalls Vikas today. “Then she got asking, typical Indian grandmother, if I was eating well enough.”
Finally, he revealed the big news, “Biji, I cooked for President Obama,” only to be met with a long, lingering pause.
“You’ve lost your pyjamas?” came the reply, at length. “Well, where did you see them last? Where might they be?”
He spent several minutes trying to explain, without success.
Eventually he gave up. “It’s OK,” he told her, “I’ve found them.”
She passed away not too long after.
“But I know she was proud of me,” says the 43-year-old bachelor. “That phone call was one of the funniest episodes of my life actually. I loved her very much. I owe her so much, my whole family. They’re the reason I was able to become who I did.”
So, who exactly did Vikas Khanna – the boy from Punjab – become?
Today, we are trying to find out in the best way possible: over a meal he has helped prepare at his new – and first – restaurant in Dubai. Junoon, in the Shangri-La hotel, is modelled on his and business partner Rajesh Bhardwaj’s Michelin-starred contemporary Indian eatery of the same name in Manhattan.
Here, Vikas will be cultural ambassador rather than head chef but, even so, the food is terrific. Every so often, he bites into something and lets out an exclamation as if, even now, he’s still surprised by how good his own food tastes. “Isn’t it like something that’s been made in a house in Kerala?” he asks at one point.
I nod. “Even better,” I say. The fact I’ve never been to Kerala seems irrelevant. I once had a curry cooked for me at a home in Burnley, Lancashire in the UK, so I get the gist. In any case, there’s no doubt Vikas knows his kitchen chops. It’s probably not quite right to say he’s the most famous Indian ever to wear whites for a living – this is the homeland of Sachin Tendulkar, after all – but he’s up there.
He’s cooked for everyone from the Dalai Lama to self-help guru Deepak Chopra. In fact, the Dalai Lama not only became a personal friend after they were introduced in New York, but he also agreed to pen the foreword to a recipe book, Return to the Rivers, Vikas wrote about food in the Himalayas – which, it’s fair to say, puts Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals rather in the shade.
On TV, Vikas has hosted the second season of Masterchef India and was a consultant chef on Gordon Ramsay’s US Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen. Not content with conquering just the two continents he was also a one-off judge on Masterchef Australia last year.
For such achievements, GQ India named him Man Of The Year in 2012, while the Metro newspaper in New York labelled him the city’s hottest chef of 2011. People magazine went even further and included him in its list of Sexiest Men Alive.
“I remember one night Junoon was suddenly jam-packed,” he says. “The waiter comes in and says all these people, all these women, want to see you. And I said, ‘What for?’ The chef only gets called for one reason: when someone wants to complain the food is bad. I didn’t know I’d won this poll. I had no idea what ‘hottest chef’ even meant. I thought it’s negative. My food was too hot, too spicy. But someone explained.
“And here’s the funny bit. I went out and they all looked at me and said, ‘Oh? He’s not that good-looking’.”
He laughs for a second. Then frowns. “And none of them ordered food”.
For the record, in person, Vikas is extraordinarily good-looking. His speech is soft and slow but gets faster, more excitable, as he gets further into an anecdote. He has a laugh that’s infectious. He’s essentially an old-fashioned charmer. Certainly, whatever the women of NYC think – and one suspects his tale is rather more self-deprecating than the reality – the female diners in Dubai are fans. On three occasions tonight, women have asked, “Can I please have a photo”.
“How does that feel?” I ask.
“Actually,” he considers, “I always think they are just asking me to take a picture of them.” It’s fair to say Vikas Khanna prefers to talk food more than fame or female admiration.
He may not be quite as shy as he occasionally makes out – certainly he was once bold enough to have New York’s Brooklyn Bridge closed for a photoshoot – but the kitchen is clearly where he’s happiest.
Today, he spends several minutes talking effusively about salt (“I’m crazy about it, there are so many to try”) and several more waxing lyrical about spice grinders. “You should always keep one with you,” he says. “It might be awkward but you never understand a spice until it’s ground.”
He believes being calm is the most important quality in the kitchen because “you make bad decisions if you get angry.” When I point out he’s spent hours working with the famously annoyed Gordon Ramsay, he suggests Britain’s most bad-tempered man is more placid away from the cameras: “if you stay calm for television, it’s not good for one hour on prime time.”
He admires French chefs the most “because they are perfectionists; they care about the details” – but chides British restaurants for overcomplicating food in their quest to be best. “Food should be simple,” he notes. “It should be authentic.”
It is a philosophy that was first instilled in him by his grandmother. The young Vikas was born with misaligned legs, which meant he couldn’t walk until he was three nor play sports before his early teens. By way of distraction, Biji would take him to a community kitchen and pass on to him the culinary tricks her own mother had taught her.
“I understood the power of food even when I was a child, just from observing my family and friends at mealtimes,” he once told industry website Star Chefs. “Food was the centre point, when everyone sat together at the table and shared life and every celebration of togetherness.” Such traditions inspired him to open that catering business when he was 16. That led him to studying hospitality and food at the Welcomgroup Graduate School in Manipal, passing in 1991. From there, he learned his trade at a series of restaurants and under a series of chefs across India and, then, the world.
He eventually landed in New York 15 years ago where he’s been ever since; and where he plans to stay for good.
He’s coy about how many restaurants he has worked at in the city but refers to at least three or four during our conversation. Like most chefs of standing, it seems, success was built on struggle. “I kissed a lot of frogs before Junoon,” he says.
Junoon itself happened in 2010 in New York. A couple of years earlier, while working at a “little hole-in-the-wall restaurant” he’d been approached by a woman from Fox Broadcasting Company and asked if he’d audition for a consultant chef role on the upcoming show Kitchen Nightmares. He said yes, got the gig, and after those five minutes of fame was approached by Rajesh.
At that point the 55-year-old entrepreneur had been running Indian restaurants across America’s north east for 20 years, but he now dreamed of opening a fine-dining place in Manhattan. He felt Vikas might be a suitable chef and partner.
Later I speak to Rajesh, who takes up the story: “My mantra was that I wanted a restaurant that served Indian food, but that wasn’t an Indian restaurant. After meeting with Vikas I knew he would be the perfect chef because he completely understood that vision. He had the right demeanour and work ethic, and was obviously great with the media.”
The relationship blossomed. Together the pair turned Junoon – colloquial Hindi for passionate – into a must-visit destination. It won praise in The New York Times while Vikas himself received a proclamation from the Council of the City of New York for his “outstanding contribution to the city”. Ever since, the awards, TV offers, book deals and celebrity customers have kept rolling in.
For now, though, he’s hoping Junoon will be a Dubai success. “We came here a few years ago and we fell in love with the restaurant scene,” says Vikas.
“It’s so interesting. I wouldn’t say it’s completely evolved, but it’s so eclectic. I love that. The curiosity here is very high too. You can’t experiment without curiosity in customers.”
It’s close to India, too, which is a big thing for him. After he leaves Dubai that’s where he’s heading. He still spends three months a year there, partially to see family and partially to keep researching his books. His latest tome will explore the culinary traditions of the country’s food festivals.
As our evening comes to a close with chocolate truffles, talk returns, almost inevitably one feels, to that homeland and to his family. He’s excited to see them. “They are always there for me,” he says. “My mum acts like my therapist sometimes, always there to talk to. Every time I need pulling down to reality I know they don’t care what restaurant I’m opening or what TV show I’m doing as long as I’m happy. Knowing that means more than all the transient fame in the world.”
