Chef Vineet Bhatia serving up a fine-dining experience at Everest Base Camp

Only a handful of chefs have left India and managed to find international success and fame. Vineet Bhatia, who left two decades ago, may be the most successful and famous one of them all. He is now a big brand: and from his base in London, oversees an empire of 10 restaurants across the world (from Geneva to Doha), with three more scheduled to open this year.

Over his impressive 30-year career, he has won almost every culinary award possible and repeatedly scaled new culinary peaks. But next week, he will attempt a different kind of peak: “We will serve Michelin-starred Indian food at the base camp of Mount Everest,” says the passionate chef. “We are attempting to set a Guinness World Record for a Michelin-starred fine-dining experience at the highest altitude,” he explains.

Bhatia and a team of support chefs (including his son Varaul) will attempt to trek up to 5,365 metres from Lukla to the Everest Base Camp in Nepal for an ambitious project called “Fine Dining at Its Peak”.
 

The trek is expected to take about two weeks and will include multiple stops for acclimatisation. Due to the health risks involved, the chefs will be accompanied by medics. The group will also include a few lucky “paying guests” who will taste the six-course, wine-paired menu. En route, Bhatia will forage for wild produce and task his creativity to come up with a menu that features ingredients he’s never worked with before. The trek will be demanding in other ways too: Bhatia will have to figure out how to produce his fine-dining experience while cooking in a low-oxygen environment. But he’s a determined man. As he says, “It’s been a lifelong ambition and it’s for a good cause.”

For almost a decade, Bhatia has been the global brand ambassador for the Heart for India Foundation, a charity based in Chennai that works to support the girl child. “They support over 2,500 girls from the time of their birth. They educate them, find them employment and make sure they are as independent as possible,” he says. All proceeds from the expedition will go to this foundation.

Bhatia is 50, so he will travel loaded with cautionary warnings from well-wishers. Temperatures drop to minus 11 degrees Celsius and avalanches are not uncommon. There is a history of failed attempts and even trained mountaineers have aborted missions halfway. But Bhatia is unperturbed: “I have been training for three hours a day with a 10 kg weight plate tied to my back and at an incline of 9.7 per cent. My mantra has always been: have no regrets in life and I’m going to give it my best shot.”

A video crew will follow the chef into the wilderness and diners can opt for a less strenuous route and also have the option to fly in and out by helicopter and just join for the meal.

Bhatia will carry both the Indian and British flags with him but he makes it clear that the Guinness record is only part of the motivation. The rest is down to his commitment to the foundation. “I will welcome the record if it happens but it’s not the most important factor. I don’t want to fail my foundation,” he says. To raise funds for the project, Bhatia cooked with the two-star Michelin French chef Michael Roth in Geneva recently. The menu included a dish called “mountain clouds”, a variation on kheer made with saffron and pineapple. The dish will also be on the menu at the base camp.

Ever since he joined the Mumbai Oberoi in 1988 as a junior trainee, Bhatia has been an individualist. Fitting in was not his thing. “I was fascinated by Indian cuisine and was creative. I was once reprimanded for cooking lobster in a tandoor. They asked me to stick to dal-chawal and not experiment with expensive ingredients,” he recalls.

But London allowed his creativity freer rein — and loved it too. In 2001, Bhatia became the first Indian to win a Michelin star for his restaurant, Zaika. The Michelin stars kept coming (Rasoi London in 2005 and Rasoi Geneva in 2009), and the world was smitten. So much so that even the much feared British food critic Fay Maschler wrote of Rasoi: “Excellent food, prepared with imagination and care.”

Rasoi soon became a celebrity favourite — Tom Cruise is a fan. Cruise first tasted Bhatia’s food in the early 1990s and fell in love with the chef’s rendition of butter chicken. “Whenever he is in London, he sends his personal chef to the restaurant and we vacuum-pack 10 kg of the gravy for him,” says Bhatia. “We have taught his chef to add poached chicken to the gravy so it can last him months,” he adds.

As is so often the case with successful men, there’s a woman holding up the edifice in the background. In June 1997, Bhatia married Rashima, who gave up her own professional ambitions to support his dream. Rashima is the enterprising gatekeeper to Bhatia and the backbone of his operations. She doubles up as his agent, manager, business partner and everything else in between. “I couldn't have done it without her. She is the force that ensures that all I have to worry about is cooking!” he declares gratefully.

Vineet Bhatia is a prominent member of a new breed of chefs, referred to as “culinary nomads”. He very nearly lives out of a suitcase, travelling for over eight months a year managing his various outposts. “Last year I spent only 83 days at home in the UK. It must be some kind of record,” he ponders. But Bhatia thrives on travel. It must also help keep him up to date with global culinary preferences and trends. Not to mention his fashion sense — he sports multi-coloured spectacle frames, a trademark fedora and a moustache twirled princely style along with designer stubble.

But life is not all hunky-dory even for this glamourous jet-setter. Just last year Vineet’s flagship restaurant, VBL (Vineet Bhatia London), was awarded a Michelin star, only months after moving to a new location. The accolade came unexpectedly and was a major personal victory (and slap in the face to his detractors who feel his best days are behind him). But the celebrations were short-lived. A couple of days after receiving the award, Bhatia announced he would be closing the restaurant — he had fallen out with his investors, and continues to be embroiled in court cases. “Of course we will re-open in London with new partners, but it’s too soon. After such a traumatic experience, I need closure before I can move on,” he confesses.

Meanwhile, all his energies are trained on the Everest Base Camp project. If he is successful, it will be the highest peak in Bhatia’s Michelin-starred career. Literally. And after that, what mountains will there be left for him to climb?