The life of a chef in the kitchen as late Anthony Bourdain saw it

The kitchen gently moves forward in the culinary world, tightly packed, yes, but with leaders un-despotic

One of the first orders of a weekday evening at Bengaluru’s Toast & Tonic, a hip Manhattan East Village-styled restaurant, is the soft shell crab fried rice. Besides the crab, the dish’s protagonists include the fragrant gobindobhog rice, bacon and kimchi. Soon after it’s all assembled in a large bowl by a team of cooks, which clearly knows what it’s doing, Chef Manu Chandra picks it up for a quick but careful garnishing. “I’m just here to expedite things,” he says.

The vibe in the dining area is lively and high octane, perfectly in sync with its sophisticated and old-world