Chef Vineet Bhatia: The Icon Who Redefined Indian Cuisine

Before Chef Vineet Bhatia became one of the most influential voices in global Indian cuisine, he was just a boy trying to find where he belonged. Born and raised in Mumbai, Bhatia was often the shortest in the room – frequently dismissed, underestimated, and bullied. “I was always that kid people picked on,” he says with disarming honesty. “And I think, subconsciously, that drove me to find a space where skill mattered more than appearance. The kitchen became that place.”

Ironically, he hadn’t set out to be a chef at all. He wanted to be a bartender at the Lancer’s Bar in Mumbai (then Bombay). “But they told me I wasn’t tall enough to stand behind the counter,” he recalls. “The only place where nobody could see me was the kitchen.”

Demeaned, yet determined, Bhatia entered what he thought would be a short internship – two weeks in a dark, dungeon-like kitchen. What he found instead was discipline, purpose, and the beginnings of a lifelong love affair with food.

“I would come in the morning, and they would check everything, be it your shirt, hair, or whether you had shaved. It felt like the army. I loved that.” A childhood dream of becoming an Air Force pilot may not have taken off, but that same yearning for structure, focus, and flight eventually took shape in the kitchen.

Today, Bhatia is a master of evolved Indian cuisine, with a distinctive footprint both in India and abroad. From his signature fine-dining expressions in London to contemporary interpretations of Indian gastronomy across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain, he continues to shape the global palate. In India, he mentors the culinary direction at The Oberoi’s flagship restaurants – Dhilli (Delhi) and Ziya (Mumbai and Gurugram) – bringing his vision of innovation full circle.

Memory As Menu

At 19, Bhatia joined The Oberoi School of Hotel Management, Delhi, and began training across every department – from butchery to pastry, French fine dining at La Rochelle, and Cantonese at Taipan. “There were no recipe cards. You just observed. And remembered.”

So when The Oberoi, New Delhi, invited him decades later to design a special menu for their 60th anniversary, he didn’t reach for dishes – he reached for memories. “Everything on the Ode to the Icon menu at Dhilli,” he says, “came from those early days. Some things never really leave you.”

Rather than replicate, he chose to reimagine – infusing each dish with a touch of Delhi, of course. Taipan’s stir-fried lotus stems reappear alongside spice-crusted chicken (with dal makhani sauce) inspired by The Palms’ famed Chicken In A Basket. There’s pan-seared seabass marinated with a light rub of fennel, coriander seeds, and pepper, touched with lemon butter – a quiet nod to nostalgic French inflections.

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And then there’s the Gulab Jamun Misu. “Back in the ’80s, Café Espresso was known for its cold coffee – it might’ve been the city’s first café to stay open round the clock,” he recalls. “This dish is a tribute to that memory – reimagined as a deconstructed tiramisu with gulab jamun notes and a daulat ki chaat topping. It looks global, but it tastes unmistakably local.”

Surprises continue on his menu. “There’s a dish called Chatak Chena Chaat – curd, rasgulla, and bits of chaat. It’s simple, unassuming, and even unfussy. And yet, people love it. It outsells everything.” For Bhatia, the dish is a reminder that sometimes, the most modest combinations hold the greatest charm.

Rewriting Butter Chicken

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When he first moved to London in the late ’90s, Indian cuisine in the West was still boxed into Butter Chicken clichés. Bhatia would prepare his version with a bright yellow gravy – lighter, subtler, and without the usual overload of cream. Even Rogan Josh came with certain expectations. “So I started doing a Kashmiri-style braise with Chicken Tikka in a fenugreek-infused tomato sauce,” he says. “But I never called it Butter Chicken or Rogan Josh. I would describe the dish, never name it.”

His plating was minimal – not to make a statement, but to survive. “I wasn’t trying to create a buzz. I just wanted people to see Indian food the way I saw it: honest, elegant, and deeply rooted.” Fortunately, some critics understood what he was doing. “They wrote that it was beautiful food, and that saved me.”

That quiet revolution led to Zaika, which became one of the first Indian restaurants to win a Michelin star in London. Then came Rasoi in Chelsea and Geneva. In 2009, Bhatia became the first chef of Indian origin to earn two Michelin stars. “London didn’t know what to do with Indian food that wasn’t Butter Chicken and Naan,” he says. “But I knew it could stand shoulder to shoulder with French or Japanese cuisine.”

No Smoke, Just Soul

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At a time when social media rewards spectacle, Bhatia remains grounded in taste. “The true art is knowing when to stop. A great dish doesn’t scream; it holds your gaze quietly. The flavours should speak.” He’s obsessed with flavour layering and technique. “You should be able to taste a dish in your head before you even make it.”

Ask him about ingredients, and he lights up. “I love kari patta. I can use it in everything, from chocolate to soup, and even a kebab. We used to rim martini glasses with it. So the first thing you smelled was curry leaf–subtle and elegant.”

His favourite tool? “A mortar and pestle. There’s something about grinding spices by hand, whether the aroma or the feel. It’s meditative.”

Leading With Legacy

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For all the global acclaim, Bhatia is still most animated when talking about his team. “People say, “Why train them? They’ll leave. I say, so what? I would rather give someone a future than ten borrowed ideas. I would rather take a 20-year-old with no experience and spend four years teaching him something that stays for life.”

Mentorship, to him, is non-negotiable. “It’s not about feeding the mind with quick hits. It’s about building craft. That takes time. You need four or five years to really learn an art form.”

For Bhatia, the return to The Oberoi, New Delhi wasn’t just professional, it was personal. “This place shaped me. And to walk the same corridors again – this time as someone contributing to its story – it’s a quiet kind of pride.”

The icon never needed to be loud; his food did the talking – plate by plate, memory by memory.