“Please record your mother’s recipes.”
Chef Sriram Aylur tells every millennial he meets. His counsel comes after losing his parents — and consequently, a generation of the family’s time-tested recipes. Take, for instance, the lip-smacking condiment his father would prepare, which would leave a beautiful aftertaste on his palate long after he’d wiped his plate clean.
Chef Sriram wishes he could replicate it today. But it went undocumented.
While his recollection is sketchy — “My father used to burn copra (dried coconut), remove the charred part, leaving the rest smoky. He would then roast chillies, coriander, cumin and a few other ingredients…” — he remembers with certainty how well the condiment paired with vegetables. It gave them a spicy zest.
“The best part was, even if you weren’t a great cook, you could just take a potato or aubergine and add the powder while cooking it. The powder’s flavours were so well-balanced that, rest assured, the final dish would turn out wonderful.”
One can safely assume that an appetite for experimentation runs in the family DNA. The menu at ‘Quilon’, a MICHELIN-starred restaurant in London, will agree. It is indulgent, personifying Chef Sriram’s genetic craft through classic South Indian dishes. Perhaps it is this alchemy that he brings to the table which has helped him repeatedly crack the MICHELIN code — Quilon was awarded its first MICHELIN Star in 2008 and has not missed the mark ever since.
From Mumbai to London on a ticket of South Indian flavours
The baked black cod at the restaurant is pegged as ‘divine’. The Japanese speciality undergoes a series of South Indian revisions until it is a desi revamp, described by guests as “soft as silk”. It’s a real humdinger of a dish! As you work your way down the menu, you’ll see it’s a kaleidoscope of flavours. There are the pan-fried quail chop, prawn masala, Malabar paratha (Kerala-style flatbread), lemon rice, ada pradhaman pannacotta. The choices will make you wish you’d worked up a greater appetite.
To Chef Sriram, every dish essays the role of a cultural ambassador. Over the years, they have become inextricably linked to the city’s social fabric. His efforts to take desi food to a global dais have yielded success. Food was always central to his life, Chef Sriram explains. “My father was in the catering business; both he and my mother were fantastic cooks. I was bred amid good food.” To add to this, Mumbai’s cosmopolitan nature formed the culinary scaffolding of his growing-up years.
But nothing could compete with Sunday lunches, where the table brimmed with authentic South Indian dishes. “It was a feast! Sometimes, friends and relatives would drop by, and other times, we would have unexpected guests,” Chef Sriram shares.
When it came to choosing a career, Chef Sriram ventured into law, but later, at his father’s behest, he explored culinary pursuits. He joined the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition in India in 1984 and followed this up with a post-graduate degree in food production skills and management from Mumbai, which paved his way into the Taj Hotel in Mumbai. Here, the young chef was exposed to “the best chefs, talent, and the finest ingredients”. His subsequent travels around the world made him cognisant of the potential of Indian flavours.
It made him want to formalise his love affair with food.
His first project was the ‘Karavalli’ restaurant, created in 1990 in Bengaluru, which went on to be featured among the World’s Best Restaurants. Then came the London-based ‘Bombay Brasserie’, which he started in 1982 — the venture helped Parsi, Gujarati, and Maharashtrian fare find their footing among epicurean choices — followed by Quilon in 1999.
Retaining the glint of the MICHELIN Star
Chef Sriram’s tables have seen the likes of former prime ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Dr Manmohan Singh, Sir John Major, Prince Charles, Roger Federer, AR Rahman, Sunil Gavaskar, Tom Cruise, and Madonna, among other national and international celebrities. He is also the only Indian chef to have cooked at the World Economic Forum in Davos continuously for the past 16 years. He says he owes his success to the holy triad — the right technique, authentic ingredients, and passion for the craft.
“Let’s say I’m doing a Kerala fish curry. I want that even a native who eats it will declare that it tastes just as it does back home.” It’s the same with the Mangalorean-style chicken curry. “To get that authentic taste, we use Byadgi red chillies, tamarind, and pepper. While these are now available in London, when we started, they weren’t, and so we used to import these ingredients.” He then points to an unassuming dish of asparagus and beans. Called fugaath in Goa, poriyal in Tamil Nadu, and thoran in Kerala, it’s a simple stir-fried vegetable whose coconut charm is tempered with the grittiness of mustard. “It’s really simple. But guests love it.”
The awards have, time and again, reaffirmed Chef Sriram’s belief in the formula of consistency. Quilon won the ‘Best Indian Restaurant Good Curry Guide Award’ (2001), was nominated as one of the five best restaurants in ‘Time Out Food Guide’ (2003), and won the ‘Star Diamond Award from the American Academy of Hospitality Sciences’ (2004). And then, in 2008, one morning, Chef Sriram opened the newspaper to find Quilon had won its first MICHELIN Star. The food gods have been appeased ever since.
But Chef Sriram has a disclaimer. “Remember, you get awards for what you have done, not what you ae going to do. You still have so much left to prove. You still have a long way to go.”
Edited by Khushi Arora
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