If you have talent then food can help you reach the top

Two weeks ago I heard that Asia's 50 Best Restaurants had picked an Indian restaurant for its One To Watch award.

An Indian restaurant had won this award? Who could it be?

 

   I thought of the obvious suspects. Mumbai’s Papa’s. And Prateek Sadhu‘s Naar, high up in the hills. I messaged Prateek. It was not him, he responded. I asked Hussain Shahzad if it was his brainchild, Papa’s, that had been recognised. Nopes, he said.

 

   So, who could it be?

 

   When 50 Best announced the name, I was a little taken aback. The winner was Farmlore in Bengaluru. There was no doubt that it deserved the award. It is one of India’s greatest restaurants.

 

   But it was an unusual choice because most restaurants that win international distinctions tend to be places that have learned how to play the global PR game. They employ high-priced PR agencies; they cultivate ‘influencers’ and Instagrammers all around the world; they arrange collaborations with big-name chefs; they fly in and pamper food bloggers who they think might be voters for 50 Best and other awards, and feed and hydrate them until they go back home overfed and hung over.

 

   I have no problem with these tactics. They are not dissimilar to the methods that Hollywood studios use in the run-up to the Oscars or the Golden Globes.

 

   But, here’s why I was surprised: Farmlore doesn’t know how to do any of this. They don’t have a high-priced foreign PR agency. They are not constantly spending lakhs of rupees on flying influencers into India. Hell, they barely understand how to promote their own restaurant in India.

 

   I had concluded, based on their inability to play the game, that Farmlore would never make it to the 50 Best or to any other such awards. And yet, here they were, winning global recognition.

 

   So, I was wrong about that. But I wasn’t wrong about Farmlore itself.

 

   I first went there by stealth. I had heard good things about the restaurant from Bengaluru people whose opinions I respected. When I was in the city, I tried calling and booking a table and was always told that because Farmlore was such a small restaurant, they were full up for the next couple of weeks.

 

   I was then forced to try a stealth approach. I went on the site and booked for a much later date using a pseudonym. This approach failed, because they made me pay a deposit with my credit card and not having fully mastered the world of espionage, I still use credit cards with my own name on them. But at least I got a booking. And I reckoned I would be regarded as just another single diner from the website.

 

   It almost worked. In the end, the chef, Ebenezer Johnson, figured out who I was. He seemed so knowledgeable and capable that it worried me slightly that I had never heard of him before.

 

   My worries deepened when I tried the food. It was cuisine-agnostic in that influences from all over the world were incorporated into the dishes. Though the restaurant’s location in a farm suggested that the meal would be all farm to table, the food went beyond that cliché. It was complex, brilliantly conceived and delicious.

 

"Foreign awards usually go to high-profile chefs. And Johnson, a shy man, is content to be the best Indian chef you’ve probably never heard of."

   Johnson introduced me to the two chefs who made up his team. One of them was Mythrayie Iyer, who had been part of the opening team at Avartana. And the other was Avinnash Vishal, who had worked at the three-Michelin star Frantzen.

 

   I left Farmlore satisfied but intrigued. Usually, great restaurants announce themselves. And yet here was what was clearly one of India’s best restaurants, and I had read virtually nothing about it or heard of any of the people who were behind it.

 

   I tried to make up for my ignorance in the years that followed. I wrote about Farmlore in Brunch. It got the top rating of five stars (along with Indian Accent and Avartana) at the Culinary Culture Ultimate Restaurant Ratings. Johnson himself came second on the Food Superstars list of India’s 30 Greatest Chefs. Farmlore appeared on Conde Nast list of India’s best restaurants. Mythrayie won the Food Superstars award for Best Young Chef, and because she is charismatic and articulate, she soon became a favourite of journalists looking for chefs to interview.

 

   But I still thought Farmlore was handicapped by Johnson’s low profile. Foreign awards usually go to high-profile chefs. And Johnson, a shy man, is content to be the best Indian chef you’ve probably never heard of.

 

   Which is a shame, really. Because his is an amazing story. His father was a constable in the Chennai Police and he grew up in a kachcha house with no great food (let alone restaurant) tradition. But from the time he was in class seven, he was determined to become a chef. As he was a bright student, his parents hoped that he would get into engineering. He did, but he refused the place saying that being a chef was in his blood.

 

   It wasn’t really. But when Johnson was growing up, a relative became a chef on a cruise line. He would send postcards from each exotic destination he went to and return laden with gifts for his poor relatives. For Johnson, this was the acme of glamour and sophistication. If he could become a chef on a cruise liner, then he too could enjoy this life, he told himself.

 

   Johnson did a short course in hotel management in Chennai and then became an apprentice at the Taj Coromandel hotel where, he says, the chefs taught him the basics.

 

   But, his search for glamour continued. So, when he saw an ad from a cruise company that was looking for chefs, he made his first long train journey from Chennai to Mumbai to be interviewed for the job. He got the post, left the Taj, took to the sea, earned more money than he ever had (most of which he sent home to his parents) and learnt a lot about the kitchen. He didn’t find the glamour though. But he worked his back off. On one occasion, he remained in the kitchen for 28 hours, the feat so impressed his employers that they promoted him instantly.

 

   As much as Johnson was earning on the ship, it was not enough when his parents’ house burnt down. The family did not have the money to build another house. So Johnson jumped ship and decided that he would stay in America until his visa ran out, accepting relatively high-paying tough gigs at restaurants across the US. He worked everywhere from South Indian restaurants to Greek restaurants to American diners. By the time he got home, he had saved enough money to build a pakka house for his parents.

 

   Then followed a seemingly dull period of working for undistinguished hotels in South India. But by then, Johnson had really got into food. He was fascinated by El Bulli and may have been the first Indian chef to reproduce that restaurant’s spherified olives and put them on the menu. He found chefs he idolised, like Gaggan Anand and corresponded with them.

 

   He says that he developed his own style of cooking during that period. He didn’t have access to great restaurants, great ingredients or great dishes. But from what he read and what he saw on YouTube, he managed to create a vision in his head of the kind of food he would like to serve.

 

   His big break came when he was hired to open a modern Indian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, which he named Nadodi. His second break was when he returned to India and linked up with Kaushik Raju, a hotelier and businessman in Bengaluru.

 

   Kaushik encouraged Johnson to start his own kitchen and Johnson recruited Myathrie and Avinnash. The trio experimented with new techniques and new flavours, and because Johnson believes that his food is a story, they called the operation Lore.

 

   Lore did many pop-ups and caterings in Bengaluru, but plans to open a standalone restaurant were scuppered by the pandemic. It was Johnson who persuaded Kaushik that the farm his grandparents had set up on the outskirts of Bengaluru might be a good location for a restaurant. Bengaluru had grown so quickly that the farm was now well within the city.

 

   So Lore became Farmlore. Johnson adapted his recipes to make the most of the ingredients that were grown on the farm and they opened Farmlore as a small, tasting-menu-only restaurant without any fanfare or publicity.

 

   For the first few months it was a success with Bengaluru foodies who liked bragging about a restaurant that nobody else had heard of.

 

   That changed slowly – my trip is just one factor – and eventually the recognition and the awards came flying in.

 

   I won’t describe Johnson’s food in detail, except to say that it is less about style and more about the flavours he extracts from his ingredients. Myathrie is now leaving to work in a restaurant in Chile. Avinash who had taken some time off to work in America will be back at Farmlore in a month or so.

 

   I imagine that in the months ahead you will read more about Farmlore. Perhaps more of us will be able to secure tables there. But when you do eat Johnson’s food remember this: He has never worked with any great global chef. He has never worked in a Michelin-starred kitchen; he has never been a stagier at a famous restaurant abroad.

 

   This is a guy whose family never went to restaurants, whose food emerges out of his own imagination, a product of his reading and his research. His success shows us that in today’s India, no matter where you come from or what advantages you get at birth, if you have talent then food can help you reach the top.