Vishwesh Bhatt - I Am From Here

VISHWESH BHATT

with Sara Camp Milam

PHOTOGRAPHY BY ANGIE MOSIER

Copyright 2022 by Vishwesh Bhatt

Foreword 2022 by John Currence

Photographs 2022 by Angie Mosier

All rights reserved

First Edition

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Cover design: Amit Malhotra

Cover photograph: Angie Mosier

Book design by Ashley Tucker

Production manager: Anna Oler

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

ISBN 978-1-324-00606-0

ISBN 978-1-324-00607-7 (ebk.)

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

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Before We Get Started:
Pantry, Equipment, and Techniques

CHAPTER ONE
RICE

CHAPTER TWO
PEAS AND BEANS

CHAPTER THREE
OKRA

CHAPTER FOUR
TOMATOES

CHAPTER FIVE
EGGPLANT

CHAPTER SIX
CORN

CHAPTER SEVEN
POTATOES AND SWEET POTATOES

CHAPTER EIGHT
PEANUTS

CHAPTER NINE
GREENS

CHAPTER TEN
SHRIMP

CHAPTER ELEVEN
CATFISH

CHAPTER TWELVE
CHICKEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN
PORK AND LAMB

There is no definitive answer to the question of what it takes to become a chef. If you put in the time and effort and complete a course of study at, say, medical school or law school, you will become a doctor or a lawyer, but by completing a course of study in cooking school, you are almost without exception not a chef.

I opened my first restaurant, City Grocery, in the spring of 1992 at twenty-six years old. With a sum total of eight years of cooking experience and a decent Southern rsum, I had absolutely no business opening a restaurant. I could run a kitchen, I could cook delicious food, but I was most definitely not a chef.

Vish began dining at City Grocery shortly after we opened, frequently two to three nights a week. He ate meticulously, I noticed, as I would pass through the dining roomplacing a bite of a single component of each dish on his fork, examining it and smelling it before placing it carefully in his mouth.

At first, we kept our distance. He would raise a fork when I passed. I would, on occasion, have a word with him, but not long, not wanting to interrupt the ritual of his meals. He was an even more regular presence in the bar upstairs and was always with a jovial crew, laughing and enjoying themselves. More times than I can count, an unexpected (and usually heavy-handed) pour of whiskey slid in front of me, accompanied by a handshake before he quickly scurried back to his friends.

But Vish soon kicked in the door to our friendship. He was fascinated with the restaurant, food, and operations. His thoughtful pours of whiskey turned into visits to the back door of the kitchen with a bottle of Burgundy, Champagne, or Scotch, and, eventually, into bites of his mothers cooking, to say thank you for a particularly enjoyable meal. Vishs mother cooked one night a week at the vegetarian caf next door, and it was clear as crystal on his first delivery how proud he was of his mothers cooking.

Like many other chefs in the Western world, I suffered a tragic misunderstanding of Indian food, believing that the recipes the English stole during their colonial occupation and reimagined for the sadly bland palates of their countrymen back home were at all authentic. In 1994, I had no idea that a samosa even existed... much less that the addition of curry leaf and ajwain seed to mashed potatoes and peas could catapult those ingredients into transcendence. Though my greatest failing as a chef is that I am pathologically incapable of remembering meals and dishes, I do remember Vish bringing his mothers kachori and tamarind chutney by the back door of the restaurant to try. She left us far too early, but it is no secret to anyone who knows Vish at all that much of his cooking is dedicated to re-creating dishes she loved. To this day, her food and Vishs homages to it are some of the most explosive and moving dishes I have ever tasted.

In the mid-1990s, Vish decided that he would best advance his career by heading along to cooking school. After school, several jobs around the South, and a brief stint in ownership, Vish returned to Oxford in 2001. I knew from the moment he returned that we would open something to showcase his abilities. Vishs time away had provided the experience needed to help me propel things forward confidently at City Grocery. His focus was firmly rooted in traditional French cooking, and his stoic discipline facilitated precise execution of everything he cooked. He was a quick study and a very firm hand.

Over the last twenty years, Vish and I have spent more time traveling together than most couples do. On these trips we would frequently descend into a conversation about finding a small spot for him to work on his food, Vish declaring that he would never be the clich: a grinning Indian chef in a small Southern town hawking curry and tikka masala. He wanted to be taken seriously for the skills and techniques he had learned in Southern kitchens and through traditional education. In his mind, he was a Southern chef encased in the body of an Indian man.

I had traveled this murky path fifteen years earlier. I was assured in my abilities to please folks, but I had no idea what I was doing. By 1998, I had opened several restaurants in Oxford, and word was spreading nicely about what we were doing. I had begun to cook with confidence, and as a result found my path and my story.

Vish and I decided to open Snackbar in 2009, in a forlorn strip mall, half a mile up the main north/south corridor bisecting the Oxford square. The plan was to present a brasserie-style menu focused on classical French bistro items that addressed the unfortunate state of English pub food (interesting ideas for dishes, sadly executed by visionless English line cooks). It was a blast.

Over the course of eighteen months, we navigated the waters of cowritten menus: menus that he wrote and I edited heavily, menus he wrote less heavily, menus he wrote and I edited lightlyand, ultimately, a menu I could find nothing whatsoever to make a single note on and, trust me, I tried.

Vish was cooking with confidence that would soon grow into joy. Unbeknownst to both of us, he had emerged from the chrysalis of his career. During this time, we had a conversation in which he lamented the loss of his mother, how he missed her food and was beginning to think about how it might fit into the landscape of Oxford. My advice was to never to suppress that feeling inside that inspires passion in you. I had been told by a very wise friend that the things he liked best that I cooked were the things I clearly spent the least amount of time thinking about.