Two chefs bring forgotten flavours to life in Chandigarh

Indian Express

2 days ago

It starts with a smell — of browned onions, of slowly cooked spices, of something both unfamiliar and deeply known. In the kitchen at Hyatt Regency Chandigarh, two chefs move with quiet intensity, stirring not just pots but history.
From July 11 to 19, the hotel is hosting Royal Dastarkhan, a culinary journey into the kitchens of the Mughal courts. But this is no theme festival. For chef Deepak Sarkar and chef Osama Jalali, it's something far more personal — a reunion with memory, tradition, and home.
Sarkar, the hotel's executive chef, grew up in the bustling lanes of Delhi's Sadar Bazaar — near Jama Masjid — a neighbourhood where food and festivity were inseparable. 'My grandfather used to cook mutton korma whenever there was a feast,' he recalls. 'I'd tag along to help — bringing spices from the market, peeling onions. I was just 12 when I cut my finger slicing raw mangoes for pickle.'
That early curiosity led him to culinary school and years of experience in some of India's top hotels. But somewhere along the way, amidst Japanese menus and modern techniques, the longing for the food of his childhood never left. 'Post-COVID, with everyone doing fusion and delivery, I felt a need to return to the basics,' he says. 'Butter chicken, dal makhani, nihari — the classics, done right.'
It's this return to roots that led him to invite Jalali, a long-time collaborator and kindred spirit, to Chandigarh.
Jalali, unlike most chefs, learned his craft not in a kitchen school but in his mother's kitchen. 'She learned from the khansamas of the Nawab of Rampur,' he says. 'I'd sit with her, watch her cook, ask questions. Later, I began translating old recipe manuscripts from Farsi, Urdu, and Persian — recipes no one was cooking anymore.'
His path began in journalism — as a food critic who wrote over 2,000 restaurant reviews. But with time, reviewing gave way to reviving. 'I was seeing too many menus saying 'progressive Indian.' I wanted to go backwards — to the lost dishes.'
Together, the two chefs have curated a rotating menu of rare recipes — Nargisi Murgh Seekh, Taar Kalia, Bhindi Kalia, and the deeply surprising Gosht ka Halwa, a sweet made from mutton that diners are invited to guess before being told. 'No one ever gets it,' Jalali laughs.
But what lingers isn't just the food. Jalali brings his grandmother's 100-year-old copper vessels to serve in. He visits tables, tells stories, folds in fragments of memory with each dish. 'Food tastes different when you know where it comes from,' he says.
At a time when dining often feels rushed or performative, their collaboration feels rooted — a quiet rebellion against reinvention, a celebration of preservation. 'We're not trying to modernise history,' Sarkar says. 'We're just trying to let it breathe again.'
And for anyone who tastes it, it does exactly that.
(The writer is an intern with The Indian Express)