He was a cop, then MasterChef’s first Indian-Singaporean winner – now he’s opened a Peranakan cuisine restaurant in Chennai, India
- Sashi Cheliah was a policeman and prison officer who liked to cook – then he won MasterChef Australia and opened a restaurant. Now he’s opened one in Chennai
- He’s going back to his South Indian roots with a restaurant serving Peranakan food – Asian fusion cuisine – that ‘has an umami flavour like Indian food’, he says
Soft-spoken and down-to-earth, Singapore-born chef Sashi Cheliah was the 2018 winner of MasterChef Australia, the reality-television show in which home cooks compete in a series of culinary challenges.
He became the first chef of Indian descent (his grandparents were from the temple town of Madurai, in South India) to win the competition, with his dish of Thai-inspired sambal prawns scoring a whopping 93 out of 100 in the finale.
Cheliah was in Chennai, southern India, recently to open his fine-dining restaurant Pandan Club in T’Nagar, one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods. It serves Nyonya food, a fusion of Chinese, Malay, colonial European and South Indian cuisines that’s uncommon in India.
Why open in Chennai? “Why not?” he says. “I have roots in South India and my business partner Manoj Padmanabhan, an entrepreneur, and Sandesh Reddy, mentor, are from here.
“This city is a mix of tradition and authentic flavours, and at the same time favours experimentation and new flavours, and therefore perfect for my foray into India.”