Suvir Saran: Behold Veda to the East

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Tonight, Suvir Saran will be cooking at the James Beard Foundation: in a few days, he will be flying to New Delhi, where his second restaurant Veda is slated to open on September 1. With this restaurant opening, Suvir will meet the final criterion of a "super chef" (described in the introduction to Super Chef, p. 6): he will have restaurants over a wide geographic expanse (New York to New Delhi). That is much like the challenge faced by Jean-Georges Vongerichten when he opened a restaurant in Paris, or Nobu Matsuhisa in Tokyo, or Alain Ducasse in New York. Like them, Suvir starts by saying he is nervous and then quickly forgets any fears while elaborating on a restaurant opening half-way across the world. He told superchefblog: India drives me because I miss it, but when I am there, I miss New York. It was my partner's [Rakesh's] dream to open in India: why not feed real Indian food to Indians? In India, the quality of home cooking is superb, said Suvir: when most Indians go out to eat, they choose Italian or French over Indian. He reflected: Has anyone thought of taking Indian food to a different level in India [itself]? This maybe the first time anyone has ever dared to feature Indian home cooking in a restaurant. It is what their grandmothers ate, and maybe it's the first time they have eaten it. It is not the chic MTV food. Veda is my way of romancing India. It is what I am attracted to. It was lost before I left. When I lived there, I lived in the past with my Grandma and her friends. They have all died, and a whole chapter of India is gone. Being a chef is my way of living these people's lives in my lifetime. Indians who come to Devi in the US are amazed to eat bitter melon. Their mothers are amazed. Bitter melon, waxed gourd, lotus stem, lotus seed are exotic in India now. These are things that are lost. I am reviving them, because I saw Grandmother eating them. Nostalgia in America made me want to eat them. It wasn't trendy when I was a boy to eat these things: my peers would laugh at me! But now I love them, I crave them, I share them at my restaurants. Veda will be much like Devi in cuisine: Veda is named after the Four Books of Hinduism." Suvir's mission is to bring that essence of Indian cuisine back to India. It will serve Indian home cooking, presented for a restaurant setting, mixing specialties from different regions on each plate. Suvir told superchefblog that the tabletops are made from a yellow turmeric marble from the desert city of Jaisalmer, inlaid with white and gray mother-of-pearl. There are different lotus designs on each table. Light from the ceiling will shine on the mother-of-pearl to light up the room. One part of the restaurant has a false dome inlaid with reflective mercury glass like the Sheesh Mahal, so that one candle can illuminate the entire room. Two other sections of the restaurant have marble ceilings inlaid with lotuses and exposed brick walls. The ceilings are plastered but they have very large circular disks, that are made out of ivory colored marble and are carved and have latticework, that are being used as lamps. The carving and latticework have lotus patterns. One entire wall closes the mezzanine and makes it into a kitchen work station, exposed to diners, is inlaid with reflective mercury glass from the Moghul Period. "As you enter the restaurant, and look up, it is the last thing your eyes look at as you take in the room, and it reflects the lights picked up around the room and the pattern you see is called lotus garden," Suvir told superchefblog. The plates are handmade dishes from Japan, made especially for Veda. Veda lies in the Connaught Place neighborhood of New Delhi, the British-built financial and shopping center of the entire city. The restaurant was designed by Rohit Bal, one of India's leading clothing designers, with input from Suvir. (Before becoming a chef, Suvir studied design at the Sir J. J. School of Arts in Bombay and New York's School of Visual Arts.) If you're not Bollywood-savvy, what this means is that Suvir is opening up in the swankest part of the capital city of a country with some billion inhabitants, and Veda is set to rival Alain Ducasse's royalty-catering Louis XV. If you're heading Delhi-way, you'd best make reservations soon: superchefblog predicts a waitlist to rival the French Laundry in no time at all. Main Article: CHEF PROFILE: Suvir Saran - Super Chef Chef Profiles: Chef Profile: Rick Moonen in Las Vegas Rick Moonen on Work and Passion Previous articles: Suvir Saran Spins Indian Home Cooking Technorati Tags: chefs food restaurants cooking branding cuisine --> back to superchefblog