Top Asian chef says he will leave success behind
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Gaggan Anand / Courtesy of La Main
By Yun Suh-young
Indian chef Gaggan Anand is Asia's top chef according to Asia's 50 Best Restaurants list. The award has become as reputed as the Michelin Guide and is touted as even more reliable, especially in Asia.
Anand's restaurant Gaggan in Bangkok has topped the list for the past two consecutive years, and has been on the list of Asia's 50 best restaurants as well as the World's 50 Best Restaurants since 2014, when it ranked 17th on the global rankings. Gaggan opened in 2010.
But he says fame is "stupid" and "fake" and is planning to leave his success behind to travel around the world and explore new things. He plans to close down his successful restaurant by 2020 and move to Japan to live and open a small restaurant there.
"Look how stupid this is," he said, showing his Instagram and comparing the same photo that he posted years ago and one he posted recently. The number of “likes” jumped from the 40s to the 2,000s. His followers tripled from 12,000 to 36,000 in the two years.
"Every day I get about 200 followers. Everything is booming in my life. It's a continuous achievement. The 50 Best list, yes, but now it's Netflix," he said referring to Season 2 of the Chef's Table that he is appearing on.
"I posted the same photo years later just to see how famous I was. I wanted to experiment how people reacted. The photo is exactly the same, only the status has changed. And status is everything now. It's a fake world," he said.
"Fame is good, but do I belong in this fame? No because I'm a rooted person and I don't go often to celebrity things."
He was skeptical about fame, status and success.
"You come from nothing, you go back to nothing. Today I'm in fashion, tomorrow when I'm not, then what? That is the risk I fear. That's why I don't think so much about success. That's why I'm in Korea."
Anand was visiting Korea for the first time to participate in the Gourmet Series, an event organized by dining magazine La Main, inviting foreign chefs to explore Korea and present a gala dinner to locals using Korean ingredients.
"This is my second dinner I'm cooking in the whole year outside of Gaggan. Why am I in Seoul? Because this is the only way to reach people, I'm here to learn, not to take."
This is his first time in Korea. He visited Jeju first and explored local ingredients there to use for his gala dinners in Seoul on Oct. 8 and 9.
"I loved Jeju. I really enjoyed the sea, mountains, and the good weather. You have amazing seafood, really nice mandarins in season and black pork. I had different ingredients to think about," said Anand.
"The whole gala menu was inspired by Jeju. The bamboo tea, fish cookies with fried anchovies and seaweed, sesame myeongran cake, yuja chilli paper, Korean mushroom tart, eggplant bharta uni, tomato and plum tea, abalone khichdi, curry sangcharim, and pine nut ice cream with peach...
"It's exactly Gaggan cooking but using Jeju ingredients. It's not our original recipe. We went to Jeju and saw and experienced and created a menu there. It's exactly your style but the taste is mine."
For instance, the curry sangcharim was a crab curry barbecue experience with leaves and Indian spices. Abalone khichdi is Indian porridge made similar to the Korean version.
He lamented his lack of knowledge about Korea before visiting the country.
"I was a complete idiot for thinking Korean cuisine was just about kimchi and barbecue. I had no idea about this amazing place. You guys are really smart. You don't want to give the world what you have except Samsung and Hyundai," he said laughing.
"I also discovered amazing fashion, I bought Gentle Monster in Bangkok and I'll be bringing two more from here. At a vinyl store, I bought like 30 vinyls today. I never get them in New York or London but I got it here."
As for food, he loved fried chicken, spiced chicken, fried anchovy, braised cutlassfish, cutlassfish soup, and sea urchin seaweed soup.
"One of the best experiences in Korea was this 10 seat restaurant in Jeju. It's my dream restaurant. I want to open a 10 seat restaurant in Japan. I also had an amazing meal at Jungsik," said Anand.
He said he didn't expect much about Korean fine dining before he came here.
"I came with very low expectations about fine dining in Korea. But as I said they were way beyond expectation and I'm not trying to please people. That was how I perceived Korea. I came like a stupid guy who had no idea about Korea. Now I'm going back with a lot of knowledge," he said.
"When people ask me where to eat in Korea, now I can tell them. When I say through my Instagram this is the world of kimchi, so many people liked and left so many comments. The world understands!"
He said he believed it was his role as an influencer to make the world aware of smaller cities.
"What I'm trying to do is tell the world they should look into smaller cities. That's why I'm here, to learn and understand the future, because this is the future. Seoul is like an empty glass, same as India or countries that have grown really fast. London, Paris are already a full glass. So there's not much ambition there."
His future plan is to open a small, farm-based 10 seat restaurant in Fukuoka, open only on weekends.
"It will be like a destination restaurant," he said. "I'm also planning a moving restaurant like this because I love this. Every six months I will move to a city and do a pop up for six months.”