ON INTERNATIONAL “CELEBRITY CHEFS”, POP UP DINNERS AND THE NATURE OF “EXPERIENCES”

I was pleasantly surprised to see the unapologetically blunt feedback on social media from people who attended the recent pop up dinner by Nigella Lawson, the British “celebrity chef” who recently hosted two dinners in Mumbai and Delhi. To be fair, Nigella Lawson has never been about the food. Like the late Anthony Bourdian, her skill set lies in the intersection of storytelling, food and media, so I don’t think anyone can really expect a dinner with her to be about food. However, there have been many bad pop up dinners with celebrity international chefs in India, like the recent one with Marco Pierre White and especially with the Masterchef Australia judges and participants. But people are usually polite about their feedback, no one wants to spend 20-30,000 rupees for a food experience and say that the food was shit. 

So why do people keep shelling top dollar for mediocre experiences and is there a path forward for high end food events or like all social media based fads, is this also predestined to die a slow death by diminishing likes?

I think with all things that seek to survive and transition from fad to trend and finally to something that stands the test of time, the only variable that matters is depth. Beyond the consumption and the photo ops what was the point? Why did you pay the money? What do you remember if you didn’t have the photograph? What did you learn? What did you feel? What did you understand? Did you feel a sense of connection? Did you experience something new? Have you emerged from the experience with a perspective or insight that you didn’t have before? Did it help you place the person and his work in context? If the answer to most of the questions is no, then chances are that the experience was a waste of time and money.

For me if you go to Nigella Lawson for the food it’s not worth 5000 rupees. If you go to Nigella Lawson for the story of her life, her journey into becoming a global figure, what she has learnt about herself and the world, how she sees her work evolving in a media landscape where both print and television are struggling, what she sees as the secrets of her success; that I would pay a lot more than 20,000 rupees for. 

It is important when going for an experience to ask “why” and be honest about it. To say that the reason is a photo op with someone famous and bragging rights on social media is a legitimate reason in itself, but for the organisers of these events, they should know that their business has no legs. Mint money while you can because your food events are today’s version of yesterday’s events with self-help gurus like Robin Sharma in a few years they will move on to whatever is the industry that captures the zeitgeist, from ex-cricketers to trans-levitational yoga (and before you start googling, no that’s not an actual thing, at least not yet).

I don’t want to attack the very idea of pop up events. I go for many of them and I love them, but I always ask “why”. To me when I see Prateek Sadhu collaborate with Matt Orlando from Amass, I’m not going to eat Amass food because that’s impossible in a different kitchen with a different staff in a different country with different produce and ingredients. I’m going to see how two creative minds I admire and two chefs I respect collaborate to create something new, while constrained by unfamiliarity and a lack of time, a thrill that’s similar to watch two grandmasters playing blindfold chess rather than a traditional match. Similarly, if it was the food I was interested in, I would rather attend Manish Mehrotra’s special event around chaat or Manu Chandra’s idea driven special tables than seeing Gary from Masterchef attach his name to a meal where he spends more time taking selfies than in the kitchen. 

Which brings me to my final point about these pop up events. It astonished me that people will spend 20,000 or 30,000 for an irrelevant or under-talented international name (even cooking show contestants!) but claim that 10,000 rupees is too much for an Indian chef. Manish Mehrotra is a far more globally relevant and successful chef than many of the people associated with these pop-ups. Sujan Sarkar from Rooh is creating dishes that others in the world aren’t even dreaming of. Prateek Sadhu runs a restaurant that is miles better than Odette, supposedly the best restaurant in Asia. And yet, we spend money on pop-ups and on food travel abroad, and fail to recognise the genius that blooms at home. I know more people who have eaten at Gaggan/Bolan/Gaa/Suhring than at Indian Accent/Rooh/Masque, people that happily spend 10,000 on a photo op or 200 dollars for a steak at Wolfgang Puck’s overrated Cut but feel that 7000 is too much for a meal at Indian Accent. That’s a 90 dollars people, and if you ask anyone who actually knows anything about food, that’s a steal.

Whether it’s pop-ups or food travel and experiences, we need to move away from our fascination with all things foreign and look at things with a bit more depth. An experience with Manish Mehrotra where he talks about his life, the food that he grew up with and how it influenced him, how that finds representation in his food today, what his take is on what Indian food is, for me that is more priceless than a hundred mediocre pop ups with 1-star Michelin chefs.

In fact this is true of every aspect of experiences. Whether it’s food or art or wildlife or heritage, we need to go beyond consumption to seek depth, to engage and to understand. It is only then that an experience can unlock its true potential. Not a “curated” experience or an “immersive” experience, but something that is far more powerful, an experience that is transformative, an experience for the Soul.