A once in a lifetime experience

What if you could have dinner at a restaurant that existed for just one brief shining moment?

Where, if you went back, a day or two later, there would be no sign that the restaurant with its elaborate drapes, hundreds of candles, elegant table settings, and a performance area, ever existed?

 

Where the restaurant once stood there would be just grass in the middle of a beautiful park?

 

   What if you knew that the menu you ate would never be served again with those same dishes in that order? That, by the time you woke up the next morning, the chef would be miles away, 35,000 feet high in the sky, on his way to New York?

 

   What if the food you ate was so special that thousands of people try each week to get an opportunity to eat it? But only a few can get in because the restaurant where some of it is normally served is so popular that it takes three months to even get a table? What if the chef cooking the food is a superstar, the most popular chef in Indian history, who runs the only Indian restaurant to have been awarded three stars by the New York Times in this century?

 

   Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it?

 

   It was no dream. It happened.

 

   I know because I was there.

 

   It happened this way. The Hindustan Times turns 100 this year. There is a whole list of events planned to celebrate the centenary. But Shobhana Bhartia, my old boss, who is chairperson and editorial director of HT Media wanted to create an event that actually felt like a dream: Something that had never been done before and would probably never happen again.

 

   The HT would throw a centenary dinner that was unparalleled. We would not do some tedious variation of a five star hotel banquet or create one of those Shaadi spectaculars. This would be understated. It would be classy. And because the HT has always been the beating heart of Delhi, it would be held at a location that captured the history and heritage of Delhi.

 

   We settled on Sundar Nursery, a 16th century garden covering 90 acres that was built by the Mughals and still contains 15 heritage monuments dating back centuries, six of which are UNESCO world heritage sites.

 

   There is no proper restaurant in Sundar Nursery. So how would we organise a dinner?

 

   Simple! Well, actually not so simple. The HT would build an environmentally-sound temporary structure in a part of Sundar Nursery that would house the restaurant/dining area.

 

   This was a massive undertaking to begin with. The anniversary plans were even more ambitious. There was no point asking people to just eat. They had to be something that communicated what had happened in India over the last century.

 

   The Hindustan Times was founded to fight for India’s independence and it had grown with modern India, reflecting its evolution and celebrating its triumphs. Gandhiji was actively associated with the paper and he asked his friend GD Birla to take it over and finance it. GD Birla passed his legacy on to his public-spirited son KK Birla, who ran it for decades treating it more as a mission than as a pure business. His daughter Shobhana Bhartia has built on that foundation in the three decades that she has been at the helm of the HT.

 

"Vikas flew in on Wednesday, cooked on Thursday and Friday and then, as the second dinner ended he and Jimmy Rizvi, his partner at Bungalow, went to the airport and took a flight back to New York."

   So how would we convey that this was no mere birthday party; but something much deeper? Our solution was to organise four short performances in the course of the dinner celebrating the high spots of independent India’s journey. After much consideration we picked four themes: culture (films, in particular), sport, science and the moment when, at the stroke of the midnight hour, India awoke to freedom. Performers would sing (live, no lip syncing), dance and perform to evoke the drama of India’s journey.

 

   Then there was a question of the food. We wanted India’s best-loved chef. But we also wanted to be sure that the food would be fabulous. That left us with only one real option: Vikas Khanna.

 

   Many months ago, I called Vikas in New York and asked if he would cook for the dinner. I knew then that he was about to open Bungalow in New York, a project close to his heart because it was dedicated to the memory of his sister Radhika, who he had lost recently.

 

   Even as I asked him to abandon Bungalow and fly across continents for us, I wondered what answers I would give him if he asked the obvious questions: where would the dinner be held? What kind of kitchen would he cook in? How many people would attend?

 

   It is characteristic of Vikas that he asked none of those questions. “It is a historic occasion,” he said. “I can never say no to the HT anyway. Of course, I will do it.”

 

   As the months went on, I began to get more and more anxious about Vikas. Did he really mean it when he agreed so quickly without asking any questions? Did he even understand what it involved?

 

   My anxiety increased as Bungalow went on to become one of America’s most successful restaurants. The reviews were all raves. People camped outside the door from the morning in the hope of getting a table for dinner. The reservation site was overwhelmed.

 

   Would Vikas really leave all that and fly to Delhi?

 

   Yes, he would make the time, he confirmed. A commitment is a commitment.

 

   We went back-and-forth on the menu working closely with Chef Ashish Kumar who runs Vikas’s excellent Dubai restaurant Kinara. Of course we wanted to give our guests a taste of Bungalow, we agreed, but we did not want to simply replicate the menu. So Ashish suggested dishes drawn from the Kinara menu and several dishes were created by Vikas and Ashish specially for this dinner.  Varun Tuli, the savvy Delhi restaurateur took over the planning on the ground and promised us better-than-five-star service. (He kept his word.)

 

   Then, I had to break it to Vikas that because so many people were asking about the dinner (to avoid making it a VIPs-only affair, the vast majority of seats were sold to HT readers), we had no choice but to make it two dinners over two nights rather than just one. To my surprise, he agreed at once.

 

   And so, last week, Vikas flew in on Wednesday, cooked on Thursday and Friday and then, as the second dinner ended he and Jimmy Rizvi, his partner at Bungalow, went to the airport and took a flight back to New York. They had been in India for less than 60 hours and neither man had slept for more than a few hours the whole time they were here.
 
 

   How did it go? Well, my heart was in my mouth throughout but it all went perfectly. The temporary restaurant looked  supremely elegant, the performances went off without a hitch and Vikas’s food was, everyone agreed, absolutely fabulous. He came out to speak about the food twice and then at the end of the dinner on both nights, he entered the dining area to be mobbed. Tired as he was, he spoke to every guest and posed for every selfie he was asked for.

 

   Will there ever be a night like this again? (Well, two nights.)

 

   I doubt it. This was a once in a lifetime experience. It will probably be another 100 years before anyone pulls off something like this again.

 

   I passed through Sundar Nursery three days later and saw that the restaurant no longer existed. The dinner might never have happened. Had it all been a dream?

 

   No. Sometimes dreams do come true.