#blahvsfood: Rishim Sachdeva is the greatest Indian chef you’ve never heard of.

 

Rishim Sachdeva is the great Indian chef no one talks about.

He’s never spoken about in the ranks of Prateek Sadhu and Hussain Shahzad and Manish Mehrotra and Gresham Fernandes. 

He’s not even spoken about with the next generation of stars like Auroni Mukherjee and Johnson Ebenezer and Pallavi Menon. 

For most Indian diners, he doesn’t exist.

But for seven years now, I’ve been saying he’s one of the best Indian-origin chefs. And after eating at Tendril, his temple for (mostly) vegan cooking in London, I am convinced that he is cooking at a level very few Indian chefs are.. anywhere in the world. 

He has already been awarded a Michelin Green Star and been named by The Guardian as one of London’s Best Restaurants. 

From The Guardian

Most Indian chefs who make a mark in the big global markets (London, New York, San Francisco) do so by opening Indian restaurants. For me, the fascinating thing is Rishim’s audacity to open a restaurant that has next to no connection with Indian food. It’s vegetarian. It’s almost vegan. But it is completely borderless cooking, heroing produce in a way that is skilled, technical and supremely imaginative. 

What’s even more breathtaking is that he has done it without any industry support, just a dedicated customer and fan base that ended up crowdfunding the restaurant. 

This is a chef who deserves to be better known and whose story deserves to be told. 

At some level, it’s not a surprise that Rishim isn’t tied down to Indian food. He studied culinary arts in the UK and has spent most of his career there working with legendary places like Chiltern Firehouse, The Dairy and Fat Duck. He did a brief stint at Olive Mumbai which is where I met him around 2015-16.

Summer peas with celery 

Rishim is the person who I credit with making me look at vegetarian food differently. Olive was around the corner from my home and I would often go there for a drinks meeting. But by 2015, I found the food generic and I never ate there. Rishim came in and started a kitchen garden and started cooking food of such startling freshness and originality that I looked at vegetables in a whole new light (something I had steadfastly refused to do even after eating at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. 

Rishim moved back to the UK in early 2019 and started building the idea of Tendril around the same time that he and his wife Pakshalika had their first baby. While he had specialised in “western” food and meat based protein for fifteen years, he had become increasingly obsessed with vegetables. The variety, the freshness, the sustainability, the scope for creativity. Meat based cooking felt interpretive while vegetables felt like a blank canvas. 

Cornish seaweed tempura / Wakame salad

Tendril began in June 2019 from Rishim’s home kitchen as a supper club. By October, he found a spot for a pop-up where he served breakfast and lunch. Momentum was building and soon came the big break! A long-term residency at The Sun & 13 Cantons — the same place where Asma Khan started Darjeeling Express. Rishim and Pakshalika poured their life savings into this massive opportunity and began the residency in March... just four days before the first lockdown. 

So there they were. A young baby. No restaurant. No residency. No customers. No monthly salary. No savings. They only had enough money to survive for six weeks. Bankruptcy stared them at the face. 

Charred aubergine / fattoush / courgette / tahini 

So Rishim pivoted and started doing home deliveries for few regulars. Wake up at 4 a.m. cook from home, pack everything, chill it down, and drive all over London to deliver lunch and dinner boxes. All in, including delivery, it was £12. Just barely enough to meet costs and find a way to survive. 

Then, finally a stroke of luck — one of the boxes landed with a moderator from a major online media platform who loved it. She wrote about it, and a few days later Rishim was delivering to about 40 families every week. It wasn’t sustainable long-term, done as a one man band and from a home kitchen, but it helped the young family to survive.

White bean spread /chilli / pita 

Once the lockdown ended, Rishim restarted the pop-up. The dream of the residency and a restaurant of their own was over, the money burnt, replaced by team of two with a part-time server figuring the best way to stabilise. At one point, Rishin had worked a dish down to under £1.50 in cost.. an exercise in leanness almost unimaginable for high quality food. 

There was another lockdown hit, and more home deliveries. Although they still survived week to week, Rishim had built a loyal and devoted customer base, many of whom still talk about those early menus, and the incredible quality that emerged from a home kitchen.

Baked Brie / truffle toast / date verde 

Eventually, it was back to the popup at the pub, trying to figure what next. Until one day, in the middle of a totally dead lunch service, with just one table booked, Rishim got a call from an Indian number asking for a table. 

Within an hour, Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma walked in. By the third course, Anushka posted a story saying it was the best vegan food she’d ever had. And in that moment, life changed forever for Rishim and his family. The entire Indian cricket team came and ate the next day — and the day after that! Rishim started thinking once again of starting his own restaurant.

The moment everything changed!

By this time, Rishim had become a bit of a cult phenomenon. His customers loved him and believed in his vision. So instead of one large investor, he decided to crowd fund the restaurant. It took about six months of stress and sleepless nights to plan and execute the fund raise, but once he started, the fundraise was a massive success, raising £150K in just 24 hours after launch. The round closed quickly and at age 38, Rishim’s dream of Tendril, the restaurant, finally became a reality. 

The day I visited Tendril, the restaurant was packed for a weekday lunch and the food was just bursting with freshness, lightness and originality. 

“Chinatown” purple potatoes / sticky soy / sesame 

I started with a summer peas with celery that tasted of summer.. but the fresh, minty summer of Europe rather than our scorching Indian one. The Braised British beans with onion garlic and pita had the creamy richness of the best hummus. There was a Cornish seaweed in a delicate, light tempura batter with garlic mustard vegan aioli. 

Rishim did a vegan take on Chinatown pork belly and skin, with a sweet, salty, spicy purple potato (with skin) and a homemade miso. This was followed by the only non-vegan dishes I had… his signature Homemade Brie on sourdough wheels of Parmesan and truffle. And then a green mastelo cheese from a small family run supplier in Greece with some beautifully fresh spiced apricot and pepper marmalade.

Grilled mastelo / spiced apricot / pepper marmalade 

And finally a Charred aubergine (a take on fattoush) with fermented wild garlic tahini, sweet grilled Courgettes with crispy rice. This was probably the only dish that vaguely reminded me of India but that’s only because in my head, all charred aubergine reminds me of baingan bharta. 

For dessert, I had the stunning vegan Tendril Tiramisu. This is another Rishim signature that took him about 4 months to perfect and hasn’t changed since inception. And finally a burnt basque vegan cheesecake.

Vegan tiramisu 

The success of Tendril has led to a second restaurant, a vegan cafe and bakery focused on desserts, called Café Petiole, located at Somerset House 

When I see Rishim’s growth, both as a chef and as an entrepreneur, over the last five years, I am filled with awe. He has gone where no Indian chef ever has, cooking food that doesn’t lean on his ethnic heritage in one of the toughest markets in the world, with no backers and contacts. But I am demonstrating my own limitations by pigeonholing him as an “Indian chef”. Because whether it’s the sold out weekend tasting menus or the glowing reviews in the UK media, this is food that holds its own against any chef from anywhere in the world. 

High quality produce, smart technique, punchy flavour, and a deep understanding of contrast.. these are the elements that make Tendril such a success. 

So hats off to you Rishim Sachdeva. Most of India’s food community may not know you yet. But they will. Because you are a frickin superstar. 

From The Guardian