#ELLEGourmetCoverStar: Masque Off With Varun Totlani

It’s difficult to miss Chef Varun Totlani’s beaming face when he’s around. The head chef of Mumbai’s Masque, a multiple-award-winning restaurant, including Best Restaurant in India at Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for the past four years, believes in having fun, especially at work. Evidence of this is seen in multiple group pictures of the team, the banter in the kitchen when the staff takes you for a glimpse at the end of your meal, and the high retention rate in a profession with the highest attrition. 

“Running a restaurant is all about the guest, but it’s also about us having fun in the space. If the team has fun, the guest will automatically have fun as well,” Totlani says. 

The 33-year-old chef took over the reins at Masque in 2022 after charismatic head chef Prateek Sadhu’s departure. In many ways, Totlani was primed for the role. Opened in 2016 by enterprising duo Aditya Dugar and Aditi Dugar, Totlani joined Masque as a Commis or entry-level junior chef, and had been working his way up through the ranks. Well aware of how the kitchen had evolved over the years and tasked with more than just cooking, Totlani took to the role as fish to water, assuming managerial and budgeting responsibilities as head chef. 

“Masque and I grew up together. I’ve worked at every station at the restaurant, and as Masque evolved, so did my cooking style. When it was time for me to take over the kitchen, I started showcasing all the cooking I had built up over the years,” he says. 

Some of the dishes that became signatures since Totlani took over include Cacao Gondhoraj and Chocolate fruit dessert, where every part of the cacao was used in the cooking, and the Khad Quail with Malabar Parotta that was inspired by underground cooking techniques followed by various cultures around the world, including in Rajasthan’s desert regions, where it is known as the khad technique. 

Totlani’s palate has been developed from a young age, thanks to his parents' love for trying new cuisines and his own interest in food. As a three-year-old, Totlani was dining at Shree Thaker Bhojnalaya and grew up eating all kinds of food across Mumbai, be it street food at Mohammed Ali Road, Parsi cuisine at Olympia and Britannia, and elaborate brunches at Jazz By The Bay (now Pizza By the Bay). At home, he would prefer watching cooking and travel shows over cartoons, secretly wondering when his mother would make the same dishes for him. 

His parents then moved to Dubai, and he was further exposed to a wider variety of cuisine from across the globe, especially Middle Eastern and Lebanese fare. When it came time for him to decide what he wanted to do, he stepped away from the family tradition of becoming a finance professional and decided to don chef whites for a living. After finishing his boarding school at Coimbatore, he joined the Culinary Academy of India in Hyderabad and formally entered the world of cooking. He then joined the Culinary Institute of America in 2014 and honed his skills. Totlani had already interned at the InterContinental Marine Drive and worked at Olive at Mahalaxmi Race Course before joining the Masque team when it opened in 2016. 

“Bombay has played a big role in shaping my eating habits. Growing up, I would look forward to other food rather than what was being cooked in my Sindhi home. The city is such a big melting pot, and I wanted to try so many things that I was glad my parents were open to it as well,” he recalls. 

Travel and collaborations have been a huge part of Totlani’s learning process over the years as well. He recounts the incident of visiting a popular South Indian actor’s home in 2021 for breakfast, where the actor was peeling drumsticks to be used in his dish. When he said that peeling the drumstick meant an act of love in his family, the memory stuck, and during trials for his first menu, he created a drumstick dish called Murungakkai Marrow, where he pulped the drumsticks himself. As he says, “It was my way of showing love to my diners.” 

When Chef Daniel Humm of three Michelin-starred Eleven Madison Park came for a pop-up at Masque, Totlani, with his team, came up with a vegan version of the Mumbai ladi pao for one of the courses, something he had never thought of creating earlier. 

“Sometimes when you push yourself, you can learn so much from another chef and even your own team. Sometimes, when I see other chefs, I pick up more than cooking skills. It’s why I enjoy collaborations even more,” Totlani says. 

He cites the example of Matt Orlando, former head chef of Noma, who has cooked thrice at Masque and whom Totlani admires the most. “You will see a lot of people use sustainability as a buzzword, but I have seen how Chef Orlando doesn’t waste a single ingredient. He famously said that there’s nothing like a byproduct, just another product. While it’s been a great learning experience cooking with him, I also admire how he’ll be ready to cook fried chicken for the staff after completing an 18-hour shift. To have that kind of energy and lead the kitchen is something I really admire.” 

With multiple new restaurants opening in Mumbai over the past couple of years, including Masque’s own cocktail-forward space Bar Paradox, Totlani is busy staying on top of his game. As he says, Masque is more of a trend-setting restaurant than a follower of trends, but every now and then, he finds his creative juices drying up as well. A space like Paradox is just the right venue to explore some of the dishes that don’t fit in the fine-dining, Indian ingredient-forward space like Masque. 

The Bucatini pasta dish at Paradox, for example, was too large for a set course meal that Masque follows, and there was no place for caviar on the Masque menu, but Paradox celebrates the ingredient served with Pao de Queijo with a caviar bump from the chef himself. 

“More and more places are evolving into the casual dining format which is great because it also allows places like Masque to include more creative and experimental dishes,” he says and adds, “Like the movie Ratatouille, a lot of people say ‘anyone can cook’, but how to cook with the right attitude along with the way you carry yourself is way more important than the food itself. Cooking at the end of the day is instinct, but it's also a science.”

He cites his own example, saying he wasn’t fond of Indian food when he joined Masque. “Before Masque, I was not very proud of Indian food. I didn't want to cook Indian food, but now I'm proud of being an Indian. I'm proud of where I come from. I'm proud of my food, my culture, everything. Diners, too, are really fond of what we have to offer.”

Totlani envisions a future where an increasing number of chefs become entrepreneurs and open places that are a true reflection of themselves. Masque itself is at a cusp as it nears its 10th anniversary next year. The team is looking at changing up the space a little while Chef Totlani is looking to revamp the menu. He’s also eyeing as many awards as he can manage to fill his trophy cabinet, calling it his “competitive streak.” 

“We’re looking at Masque for the next 10 years and how it will evolve. We’re currently doing R&D for dishes and exploring ways to revamp our space. We’ve been seeing it for the last 10 years, day in and day out, so it’ll be good to have a little change. We’re also looking at how we can evolve our service, our food program, the whole thing. I can’t give specifics because we’re still working on the whole thing, but the idea is for us to evolve along with Masque as well.” 

Totlani is glad his spaces are in Mumbai, the city he grew up in. “I think this is the best time to be cooking in India. More tourists are coming in, people are spending more, and they're open to new food experiences, which is contributing to the city's booming economy. I think Mumbai is already the food capital of India, but it can become the food capital of Asia in the coming years as well. It’s a trend that will benefit everyone, not just us.”

His enthusiasm is understandable. From eating in the city as a kid to making everyone eat out of his hands at Masque and Bar Paradox, Chef Totlani sure has come a long way. 

Quick Fires: 

Kitchen Nickname: Chippy, because I make the best chips in the world.

Comfort Dish After A Long Day: The butter chicken, roomali roti, and chicken anarkali from Ustaadi in Mumbai.

Favourite Ingredient Right Now:  Black cardamom

Favourite Drink: Fresh Lime Soda

Food Trend You Wish Would Disappear: Pull-me-up cakes, and putting avocado on everything like dosas!

Dream City To Open A Restaurant In: Japan, in Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka. I would love to cook Indian food with Japanese ingredients. 

Favourite Song On Loop: Usually good with anything, but if it’s something important like launching a new menu, then Eye of the Tiger by Survivor, because I’m a big fan of Rocky movies.

Favourite Movie: Chef and Burnt

Your 3 A.M. Speed Dial Person: Mirelle Pingfu, because I share my personal and professional life with her.

Editorial Director: Ainee Nizami Ahmedi; Digital Editor: Isha Mayer; Photographer: Meetesh Taneja; Stylist: Idris Nidham; Jr Graphic Designer: Radhika Trivedi (Cover Design); Set Design: Purnima Nath; Food Stylist: Nikhil Bendre; HMUA: Daniel Bauer Academy; Claire Carmelina Gil (rep by Anima Creatives) for Suvir; Creative production: Anushka Patil and Rishith Shetty; Assisted by: Aafreen Anjum, Ishan Sharma (styling), Sneh Lad (creative production), Vaishnavi Rana; Production: Cutloose Productions.