🇮🇳 India · Indian cuisine · b. 1978
The Kolkata-born rebel who topped Asia's 50 Best Restaurants four years in a row.
Gaggan Anand is an Indian chef who, more than any cook of his generation, has redefined what contemporary Indian cuisine can be at the highest level. Born and raised in Kolkata in a family of modest means, he learned to cook from his mother and from the street food of West Bengal before moving abroad to work — first in catering on cruise ships, then through a series of hotel kitchens in Bangkok where he eventually settled.
His breakthrough came after a stage at Ferran Adrià's elBulli in 2010, which crystallised an idea that had been forming for years: that Indian cuisine, with its complex spice arrangements and its layered cooking techniques, was ideally suited to the modernist toolkit but had been almost entirely absent from the global avant-garde conversation. He opened Gaggan in Bangkok in 2010 and over the next decade developed a 25-course tasting menu presented as a series of emojis — eat the yoghurt explosion with your hands, lick the chutney off the plate, swallow the spherified curry whole.
Gaggan was named the best restaurant in Asia by Asia's 50 Best Restaurants for four consecutive years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2018) — the only restaurant ever to achieve that streak. He closed the original Gaggan in 2019 and reopened in a new location as Gaggan Anand, where he continues the emoji menu format. He is also a vocal advocate for chefs of Indian origin in the international fine-dining scene.
Indian flavour, deconstructed without losing its soul. Anand argues that modernist technique was developed in Spain and France using ingredients those cuisines were comfortable with — and that the real frontier is applying spherification, foams and dehydration to the spice-and-pickle vocabulary of the subcontinent. He has also been one of the most outspoken chefs about toxic kitchen culture and burnout in fine dining.
His current flagship; opened 2019 after closing the original Gaggan.
Open 2010–2019; Asia's #1 restaurant 2015–2018.
Casual Indian–Mexican restaurant in Bangkok.
These recipes from our database reflect the indian cooking tradition that Gaggan works in. They are not direct reproductions of Gaggan's copyrighted recipes, but traditional dishes inspired by the same culinary heritage.
“I don't cook Indian food. I cook the food of an Indian.”
“Emoji is the new menu. We have spent too many decades reading dishes instead of feeling them.”
“If you want to change a cuisine, you have to break it first — and then rebuild it with respect.”
Moves to Bangkok and works in hotel kitchens.
Stages at elBulli with Ferran Adrià.
Opens Gaggan in Bangkok.
Gaggan named #1 restaurant in Asia for the first time.
Gaggan completes its fourth consecutive year as #1 in Asia.
Closes original Gaggan; reopens as Gaggan Anand at a new Bangkok location.
Earns two Michelin stars at the new Gaggan Anand.
Anand presents his 20–25-course tasting menu as a printed line of emojis rather than dish names. Each emoji corresponds to a course — a chilli for a heat-forward dish, a goat for a slow-braised mutton — and diners are encouraged to interpret rather than read it. The format dates from the original Gaggan and continues at Gaggan Anand.
Four consecutive times: 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. Gaggan is the only restaurant ever to hold the #1 spot in Asia for four years running.
He trained largely in Bangkok hotel kitchens and credits his mother's Kolkata cooking as his first influence, but his pivotal modernist training came from a stage at Ferran Adrià's elBulli in 2010.
Anand himself rejects the label 'Indian restaurant' for his work. He describes his cooking as 'progressive Indian' — using the spice vocabulary, pickle traditions and chaat formats of the subcontinent inside a modernist tasting-menu structure.
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