What Raga, chef Gaggan Anand’s upcoming restaurant, stands for — and why phones are banned at Gaggan Bangkok

The two considered opening something in Indonesia, even travelled there, but it didn’t take. When conversations with restaurateur Zorawar Kalra of Masala Library and Farzi Cafe among other restaurants began, Anand turned to Anton: “Let’s open a restaurant and we will be equal partners.” Anton will be the face of the restaurant, he shared and then explained: “Jiro Ono’s son will make better sushi but you would like to take a selfie with Jiro. It is a legacy issue.”

In a panel moderated by Raaj Sanghvi at Bar Paradox, Kalra sketched out what Raga will look like: 40 seats, tasting menu only, a fully open kitchen on the ground floor, a private dining room above, dinner-only at the beginning. “The DNA of Gaggan will be there. The entire focus will be on the chefs, who are the rockstars, and the food on the table.” The restaurant is likely to open in July.

On its pricing — Aditi Dugar’s Masque charges Rs 8,000++ and is arguably India’s most expensive restaurant; Gaggan Bangkok has been known to go up to the equivalent of Rs 50,000 — Kalra deferred to Gaggan. “You can’t value a brand like Gaggan. It is invaluable. He will take a lead on how we price the seat.”

But added that the restaurant will sit on Janpath, the prime real estate that’s five minutes away from the Prime Minister’s residence and has embassies at a stone’s throw distance. “The kind of stuff we are doing there is incredible. We travelled to Japan together and met artisans creating the finest crockery and brought them to Raga, the cost of equipment exceeded most restaurants’ entire refurbishment budgets,” he said.

In a separate panel, Vir Sanghvi asked whether the industry is overestimating the importance of chefs. Anand reached back to his early days in Delhi, when kitchens ran on hierarchy and silence. “Chefs were like slaves. Most of us were flunks — not educated enough to be a doctor or engineer. What has changed in 26 years is that we became somebody. We become who we want to be. We as chefs were so underrated and so manipulated that we could never put our thoughts on a plate. And that was the beginning of Gaggan,” he shared.

When pressed on banning phones at his Bangkok restaurant, a decision that sits awkwardly against the reality of influencers and award panels, he explained: “When I started Gaggan at 32, I was desperate. I wanted people to come and belong to that space. It was like going to a concert. But now when you go to a concert, there’s a camera, there’s a phone… you can’t see the artists for whom you went. You would rather watch them on YouTube. That’s what I want to change. I wanted one restaurant in the world, at my stature, who happens to be an Indian who says no to phones.”

When asked if he is not worried about it impacting the sales, he said, “Do you know how many people will come when you ask them not to use their phone? This is anti-marketing. When they can’t, they will feel deprived. So they will come for that, and that’s when I will give them an experience. Because the experience is about a memory. Like I’ve been to Soam. I have a memory. I don’t have a photo to prove it.”

Fame, he said, arrived fast and became difficult to manage. “It grew like cancer. I couldn’t handle it. There were so many cameras, I couldn’t be myself. When I was younger, I was greedy. I wanted Vir to write about me, I wanted everyone to post about me. But now my stomach is a little full.” At his residency at Masque Lab the previous evening, Aditya Chopra and Rani Mukherjee had attended. Chopra, he noted, appreciated the no-phone rule. “He is not social media friendly. Rani and I exchanged numbers. When I said I will WhatsApp you, she said she doesn’t have WhatsApp. I thought — should I quit WhatsApp too?” he laughed, adding that he’s already in 15 Raga groups.

When asked for his top three Indian chefs working in Indian cuisine today, he named four: Chef Pradeep Sharma, who taught him many things, including how to sear a duck. Apart from him, it’s chef Manish Mehrotra, Prateek Sadhu and Niyati Rao.