Ranveer Brar
NoSugarCoat with Pooja Dhingra
Chef Ranveer Brar shares his transformative journey from a young executive chef to a renowned restaurateur and TV personality. He discusses
Key takeaways
- Ranveer Brar achieved the role of youngest executive chef in India by age 26.
- He emphasizes that successful businesses must listen to consumer needs rather than purely following creative ego.
Main topics
- Culinary career evolution
- Business lessons from kitchens
Notable quotes
The quality of our life is directly proportional to the quality of our relationships.
Conclusion
An inspiring deep dive into how resilience, authenticity, and a commit
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) That's the first time I failed in life. You know, otherwise I was the guy with the Midas touch. You know, you open a restaurant and suddenly, you know, you win the best restaurant of the year and whatever you're doing sort of seems to be the talk of the town. You're the youngest and the highest paid executive chef in the country for a five star hotel. You're handling three hotels when you're 26 years old. So yeah, I mean, I hadn't seen failure till then. Speaker 2 (0:25) This season on No Sugar Code, we're going back to where it all started, food. I'm sitting down with the mavericks of the culinary space to talk about their journeys, the drive required to follow a passion and what makes a food business successful. I'm Pooja Dhingra, chef and founder of Love 15 Patisserie. Welcome to my podcast, No Sugar Code, where the sugar stays in the kitchen and out of the conversation. Speaker 2 (0:51) From cooking the langar at age 16 to becoming one of the youngest executive chefs of a five-star hotel in India by 26. Now a household name, today's guest is none other than MasterChef India judge, Chef Ranveer Brar. With over 35 restaurants to his name, he helps us understand why the term celebrity chef is deeply misunderstood and how the concept of a restaurant chef is changing. Here's Chef Ranveer Brar to tell us more. Speaker 2 (1:17) Hi, Chef. Thank you so much for being here. Well, Speaker 1 (1:20) thank you very much. This was long due and I'm just glad we could finally do it. I could finally do it. Speaker 2 (1:25) So my lockdown memory, my biggest lockdown memory is me walking into my dad's room and YouTube is on and your voice is just playing in the background. Like that is just like what he's done the whole lockdown and we ate the most amazing food. So thank you very much for that. And you were even kind enough to come. to the studio and cook chicken curry with him. And that was like his biggest, you know, he sent it to all his WhatsApp groups and, you know, like picture with chef and, you know, and that's what you're, you're extremely thoughtful and kind. And I'm very grateful for that. The Speaker 1 (1:58) least we can do. Speaker 2 (1:59) Your journey with food began with your family at home and cooking at the langar in the Gurdwara. You would visit with your grandfather. Do you still cook daily meals for your family? And what are their most favorite meals that you cook? Speaker 1 (2:11) Actually, I stopped cooking daily meals till the lockdown. Really? Yeah, because you sort of get busy with your work and you sort of think you've evolved to now. I'm not going to cook dal chawal anymore, right? I'm going to cook restaurant style food or I'm going to evolve my thought and cook creative and so on and so forth. But lockdown did that for me too. It made me appreciate the difficulty in cooking the simplest dishes. Because there's nothing to hide behind. There's no complicated 12, 15 ingredients. It's all right there, you know. And that's what I discovered in lockdown. And that's where I feel people also connected. Once you sort of are able to simplify your cooking, or once you're able to put your cooking in a simplified way across to people, that makes a difference. So yeah, ever since lockdown, I love cooking simple things. There's an episode where I'm just cooking. We recently shot. I said, okay, I want to cook some dal chawal. And they said, okay, wait, we'll roll. So I didn't say a word. They just shot me for four hours. Four Speaker 2 (3:19) hours? Speaker 1 (3:20) Just cooking dal chawal. Everyday cooking is really, really important for every chef to connect to food in the most basic form. Speaker 2 (3:28) But to go back a little bit, your family actually wanted you to do a career in engineering, medicine or defense. And you actually even cleared the NDA exam. But what made you pursue a career in the food industry? Speaker 1 (3:40) Stupid stubbornness. Saying, oh, I will not do what you want me to do. My dad is an engineer. So, you know, it was a very obvious choice. Half of the family was in the army. Grandfather is in the army. So army was also a very obvious choice. And I just felt that I just did not want to do what was the obvious choice. And when you're at that age, you anyways don't listen to anybody. So it wasn't really a vision of some sorts or whatever. Speaker 2 (4:07) You know, having a curry on food wasn't even as mainstream and accepted as it is today. So what were some of the challenges like when you told them about it? Speaker 1 (4:15) First, you had Speaker 2 (4:16) to Speaker 1 (4:16) explain it. You know, in a tier two town, you had to explain what a chef was and what he did. And you used to be like, either you were laughed at or people were scared. What respect will we get? Think about us too. It was one of the two. In our case, it was, how will we be respected? Because we are like these landlords from Punjab and so on and so forth. But then the fact that it made everybody uncomfortable was my motivation to do it anyways. Speaker 2 (4:43) Really? Yeah. And never at any point were you like, is this the right thing for me? All the time. All the time. Speaker 1 (4:51) First three years were like hell. See, after I decided to do it, they said, hey, you know what? It's just infatuation. You'll get over it. I'm like, no. And then I started working with this kebab vendor. And every day was hell because it's not how you grew up, right? You would not say a word saying, dry the coal. It's dry, put it down. Dry it the next day, put it down. Dry it, put it down. So you've grown up with a different mindset with people speaking differently to you, logic and all that. You were allowed to question. Here, there was nothing. You just had to surrender. It's very painful. But the thing was that because I was a stubborn kid, I said, I will stick to it. It's just... about taking responsibility for the stupidest of actions, then you fall in love. Speaker 2 (5:35) And you know, you've said that kitchens are the best business schools, and you've cooked in your fair share of kitchens across the world. What is the most valuable lesson about business that you've learned from these kitchens? Speaker 1 (5:47) The biggest lesson that I have learned is that any business that you do, it has to be driven, need backwards. A lot of times as creative people, as chefs, what we have to say becomes really important. Whether the consumer wants to listen to it at that point in time, I think that becomes irrelevant. And that reduces the chances of success. You know, there are breakouts with that model as well, where you give the world something completely and utterly new. But what I've learned is, you know, you got to always listen. And always solve for something. Don't just create out of because I want to do this and I'm the best. It's like kind of Speaker 2 (6:29) leaving the ego aside and actually understanding what... Speaker 1 (6:31) I didn't want to use that word, but yeah, it's basically leaving the ego aside and listening. Speaker 2 (6:36) Listening. Any Speaker 1 (6:36) business needs to listen. Speaker 2 (6:38) I feel like I should start taking notes. So, Chef, you've talked about the importance of understanding the macroeconomics of food for budding chefs and food entrepreneurs. Do you think that culinary schools and hospitality education in general is lacking in this area? And how do you think they can improve? Speaker 1 (6:54) I think culinary schools and hospitality institutes are lacking in three aspects, especially around food. One is the cultural connotation and the cultural seats of cuisine are not explored. There is a logical cultural evolution to food that needs to be spoken about. for people to unlock many small questions and problems about food that they have. And most of them get solved saying, oh, okay, so samosa came from there. It became bigger because we put potatoes in it because,