Profile | Why Indian restaurants should not be slaves to spicy food, and why there’s nothing wrong with them serving pork and beef - chef Manav Tuli of Chaat at Rosewood Hong Kong
- Manav Tuli, chef de cuisine at Chaat at the Rosewood Hong Kong, tells Bernice Chan how he found his true passion – cooking distinctive Indian food
- A stint with The Oberoi Group led him to Chutney Mary in London, where he was encouraged to experiment and learned about refinement
How did your father influence your career path? “It’s a long story but a negative one. My grandparents migrated from Pakistan to India. They were very well-to-do landowners. When they came to India they had nothing, thinking they would go back, but it never happened. When my grandfather accepted the truth, he became very depressed, but he didn’t want a government handout either.
“He opened a restaurant called Green Hotel in Bhilai, in central India. But he had never worked in his life so he did not know how to run a restaurant. It didn’t do well and people below him took all the money. He became a drunkard and soon passed away.
“My dad was very young at the time and didn’t see anything good out of that restaurant so he was very much against me even thinking about becoming a chef. He wanted me to be an engineer or a doctor but I failed in sciences. On the test for physics, chemistry and biology I got three out of 75. I’m the eldest son and if you are super bad in studies, then you bring shame on the family.”
What did you do? “My father, a mechanical engineer, planned to open a cement shop. It’s the easiest business to do with not much investment. Our neighbour was a civil contractor and invited me to work with him delivering cement for 1,000 rupees a month. I only did it for three months.”
How did you get into hospitality? “I had applied for the Institute of Hotel Management and took the exam, but only scored 50 per cent. During the interview, the panel asked me why I was even there as there were other people who scored 80 per cent and higher. I thought I hadn’t got a spot and was so angry that I shaved my head. You only shave your head when your father is dead. Then I got a call from the Institute of Hotel Management asking me where I wanted to go. I said, as far away from Bhilai as I can go, and was sent to Kerala in the south.”