It has been quite a year for chef Garima Arora. Not only did her restaurant, Gaa, become the first helmed by an Indian woman chef to be awarded a Michelin star, she was also named Asia's Best Female Chef 2019. Two major accolades within two years of her opening her first restaurant. No mean feat.
"What excites me as a cook is trying something new," says chef Arora, a Noma alum. "New flavours, new ingredients. Something that doesn't have a reference point, that makes you think, 'I really enjoy this a lot'. That is how I cook and that is what Gaa is. It's meant to be different."
The idea is to surprise guests with new combinations of flavours or textures. The Mumbai-born chef is focused on making her cuisine different.
"It has to evoke a response of a certain sort. Not just, 'Oh, this is something'. It is more than that," she explains. "When food is strange and you don't have a reference point, you are trying to taste it and identify it with different parts of your palate. You think about it historically or maybe from an anthropological point of view -- What are you eating? Why are you eating this? -- because there is no reference point. This is what really excites me. This is what we go for in the kitchen, as well. Newer tools, a newer repertoire to make something that diners go, 'Oh, what's that?!."
At Gaa, chef Arora focuses on Indian techniques, like charcoal cooking, using a wood-fired oven, pickling and fermenting. Currently, she is focused on drawing umami from fruit and vegetables.
"That is something we do so naturally and instinctively, being Indian, which is why I serve jackfruit as a main course," she says. "So many people advised against it, but to me it was almost like a challenge."
The menu at Gaa, though modern, is very much based on longstanding Indian traditions.
"Because that is where I am from and it is what I have grown up eating," she says. "Having a little more of an intellectual approach to how you look at Indian food is very important. This is what French cuisine did for the new Nordic food movement. Indian food has the same tools to give chefs a way to make a more modern cuisine in this part of the world.
"I am Indian, this is what I do best. No one is going to reinvent Indian food; it's silly to even think that you can because it is so steeped in history. But what you can do is learn from it and understand that it gives you the tools to do something totally different. Food is such an intensive part of being Indian."
Chef Arora is firmly of the belief that when you eat something, it should put a smile on your face: "That's what I want to see in my guests. What goes in the dish is to that end only. At Gaa, you will never see anything theatrical or dramatic [like] smoke coming out of things. You've seen our pork belly and how simple the presentation is. The flavour and the food should speak for itself."
Everything at Gaa is born out of negative food pairing.
"How do you surprise guests? By pairing ingredients that don't necessarily go together," she adds. The banana, koji and caviar dish epitomises this. "These are ingredients not normally associated with each other."
One item that has always been a mainstay of Gaa's menu is grilled young corn with corn milk, often hailed as a standout dish. It is surprising to learn that chef Arora isn't a big fan of the cereal.
"Before this, I never ate corn," she laughs. "I always thought corn was one of the most unimaginative ingredients. Then this dish came about and we have never been able to take it off the menu. If I see corn on a menu, I would never order it!"
At Gaa, spices are not used in the traditional way. Instead of putting 10 spices together, chef Arora takes one spice and highlights it.
"The quail and cardamom stock that we have is sensational -- so warming and comforting. And yet, it makes you think of so many other things. This is what Indian food is all about. A curry will always be a curry, an example of how you use spices. But so much more is possible," she says.
Her signature dish of strawberry, caviar and how wor oil came about completely by fluke.
"We were tasting different things and ended up tasting strawberry with caviar. We then thought about negative food pairings and found out that Indian food has the highest ratio of negative food pairings. That's the whole idea of how it came about at Gaa. Though we were doing it, we just didn't know the word for it. After a little research, we realised that Gaa's cuisine mostly stems from negative food pairings," she says.
Sure enough, you never see obvious pairings on the menu at Gaa.
"Even if I cook outside of Gaa, you will never see these pairings," she insists.
Chef Arora's culinary philosophy is simple: "You have to think, why do you cook the way you do and why do you put certain things together? It is also about being in touch with who you are as a person while you're cooking."
An enthusiastic supporter of womens' associations in her hometown (known as "mahila mandals"), for women to have a fighting chance in the world, she believes that they must have education and economic independence.
"Education will lead to economic independence -- knowing what you want and having the money to get it," she says.
Meanwhile, she remains as ambitious as ever.
"I want to be better at what we do, though it has only been two years. Keeping this momentum going is important. As you evolve and grow as time passes, the idea of your restaurant changes as well. There are many changes I want to do at Gaa, interior-wise, staff-wise, food-wise, feel-wise. I think we shall take this year to concentrate on that and next year we will have a better restaurant for people to come eat at."
