BL-24 - Flipbook - Page 89
FOOD & DRINK
But, in time, it worked. The Cinnamon
Club now serves 100 000 diners
a year, and Vivek also oversees
Cinnamon Kitchens in Devonshire
Square, Battersea and Leeds, as well
as Cinnamon Bazaars in Richmond
and Covent Garden. He has even
relaxed his attitude towards curry:
“eventually, we were comfortable and
con昀椀dent enough to put a curry or two
on the menu. It helps that there’s a
younger generation now whose mums
didn’t cook for them!”
Vivek has come a long way from his
roots. He grew up in a small mining
community in West Bengal, where his
father, a mining engineer, ran the local
colliery, a prestigious position: “we
were middle class, with a domestic
staff of nine or 10”. Despite coming
from a Hindu family, Vivek was
educated at St Patrick’s in Asansol,
a Christian Brothers school; after
leaving school, he gained a place
at the renowned Oberoi Institute of
Hotel Management in Delhi, where “I
sleepwalked through the course, until
a friend dragged me into the kitchen,
and I really enjoyed it.”
kitchen, just to make sure everything
is running smoothly, that wastage
is kept to a minimum and our ethos
remains strong.”
There is no sense that he is resting
on his laurels just yet, and he takes
a keen interest in the burgeoning
London Indian restaurant scene that
he did so much to foster: Asma Khan,
the founder of Darjeeling Express,
and Will Bowlby, co-founder of
Kricket, are both close friends. And he
welcomes today’s more enlightened
attitude to working in kitchens: “we
used to work 昀椀ve split shifts and one
straight shift a week, with a day and a
half off if you were lucky. Today’s
young chefs won’t stand for that, and
they are quite right.”
So is London now the best city on
the planet for Indian cuisine? Vivek
smiles, a little ruefully. “I’ve got into
trouble for this before. I do think
London offers the best showcase
for Indian food – we have such a
long history together – but a lot has
changed in 25 years. The world has
shrunk, people travel much more,
social media has revolutionised how
we think and talk about restaurants,
and there’s a real energy, pace and
momentum about all kinds of cuisines
now, including Indian.”
His 昀椀rst posting was at the Oberoi
Grand in Calcutta, where he was keen
to work in the kitchen of the hotel’s
Indian restaurant. “But I lasted less
than 18 months. I felt sti昀氀ed: there
was no experimentation. And there
were rumblings of dissent: why aren’t
we using the top-notch produce that
the other kitchens have?”
In 1998, he was appointed the
executive chef of Oberoi Rajvilas, in
Jaipur, where – at a wedding – he met
Iqbal Wahhab, and the seeds of The
Cinnamon Club were planted.
Now 54, no longer the fresh-faced 30
year-old who opened The Cinnamon
Club – he now proudly sports an
impressive grey beard – Vivek is a
familiar face to millions of Saturday
Kitchen viewers (“I must have done
60 or 70 shows”) and he still remains
a deep love for the industry to which
he has dedicated his life’s work. “I still
do a couple of nights a week in the
A selection of Boisdale’s own-label wines
We got rather carried away at our supposedly “two bottle” lunch: it was
lubricated by several wines from Boisdale’s own-label range, including
a splendidly sappy and savoury Portuguese white – Passagem Branco
– made by Quinta de la Rosa from grapes (Rabigato and Arinto) grown
in the Douro; Boisdale’s NV Champagne, extended bottle age giving
it a pleasingly toasty edge; the Bekaa Valley Grande Cuvée, made in
Lebanon by Chateau Ksara from several white grape varieties, including
a fragrant splash of Muscat; and the smooth, well-structured Boisdale
own-label claret, which partnered our 35-day dry aged Scottish rib-eye
magni昀椀cently.
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