A life in sandwiches: Chef Rahul Akerkar on memory, mentors and Mumbai’s food revolution

But long before the accolades, Akerkar spent a decade far from kitchens, studying science in the US with the initial intention of becoming a surgeon. Food entered the picture accidentally. In the summer of his junior year, he stayed back in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and became a regular at Jethro’s, who made “the best martini in town.” When he ran out of money, he asked the owner for a job. The next day, he was washing dishes. Soon after, when the chef there left and a French consultant came on board, he took Akerkar under his wing.

This was around 1981, and the next six years saw him working in various restaurants. He split his weeks between science labs and kitchens. “In between services, I would do my homework. People thought I was crazy,” he says. Because he kept leaving for exams, Akerkar ended up working in many kitchens: under Patrick Clark at Odeon, Jonathan Bennett at Wings on Wooster Street Café, Anne Rosenzweig at Vanessa and Arcadia, among others. He cooked, bartended, waited tables.

Why did so many hire him? He smiles. “I would tell them: I’m reliable and I learn fast. Hire me for a month. If you like me, keep me and pay me. If not, don’t pay me at all.” They always kept him.

By 1987, after walking away from his studies, Akerkar realised what had been obvious to everyone else — restaurants were where he felt at home. When his parents visited that summer, he finally announced, “Your son is going to be a cook.” Their relief was immediate: “Great, you finally made up your mind.”

A zucchini and eggplant sandwich (Photo: Amit Chakraborty)

Akerkar returned to Mumbai in 1989 after a brief stint at managing a restaurant. Not long after, a catering friend passed him a party assignment. “When the host asked if I was a chef, I said, ‘I’m a cook.’ I still wasn’t comfortable with the word ‘chef’.” After that, he kept getting calls and he kept saying yes. He cooked, mostly western food, out of his mother’s kitchen on Altamount Road, and Moveable Feast was born. Then came Just Desserts with AD Singh, where he met Malini, the woman he eventually married. This was followed by Under The Over and a two-year stint in Bengaluru. Returning to Mumbai, he wanted to “reinvent himself”. “I wanted to do things right. Focus on ingredients. Offer attentive hospitality,” he says. The result was Indigo, which opened in 1999, had a three-month waiting list and became one of the most influential restaurants of its time. For Akerkar, Indigo brought two revelations.

“First, knowing I can. Second, knowing that if you build it, they will come. It’s one thing to dream; another to see it become real,” he says.

The rest is well documented — in 2015, he parted ways with his own company and returned with Qualia in 2019, on which the shutters came down during the pandemic. Akerkar moved to Goa with his family, before life steered him back again with Ode and Waarsa, his restaurants with the Aditya Birla Group.

Back in his Nepean Sea Road home, we move to his kitchen, where he is ready to cook. First, a creamy, tuna salad — textured, bright, zesty with herbs, pickles, capers and lime, equally good on toast, in a sandwich or eaten straight from the bowl. Then, a gloriously messy zucchini-and-eggplant sandwich with pesto, burrata and pickled peppers, packed into warm ciabatta layered with crushed confit garlic, served with chips on the side.

Later, in the drawing room, the conversation shifts to childhood and summers in Nashik at his Ajji’s (grandmother’s) house. “Ajji used to spoil the hell out of me,” he says. Her days revolved around prayers and food, which meant he was fed constantly: chakli, chivda, karanji, pedas and lonche (pickles) and fish curry. “The kitchen,” he recalls, “ran on a primus stove with three or four flames going at once. She hand-churned loni; the house smelled of ghee when she made besan laddoos.”

He adored all of it, but especially her fish curry and valachi usal. The dining table sat 12; at the far end, her cat Jyotsna would wait patiently as Ajji flicked bits of fish her way. “Jyotsna also loved sitaphal,” he laughs. “She’d eat it and spit out the seeds. By the end, you’d see a perfect semicircle of seeds on the floor.”

It’s a fitting image for Akerkar: precise, instinctive, full of stories, always returning to the table — often with a sandwich in hand.

Tuna salad and sandwich recipe

The various stages of the tuna salad (Photo: Amit Chakraborty)

Ingredients

For salad:

• 1 can – tuna chunks in water or brine (drained)
• ½ med carrot peeled & grated (about 2 tablespoons)
• 1 med stalk celery finely sliced (about 1 tablespoon)
• 2-3 cornichons/ baby dill pickles, finely diced
• 1 tsp capers, drained
• 1 tsp finely chopped parsley
• 1 tsp finely chopped chives
• ½ tsp fresh thyme leaves
• ½ tsp roasted cumin powder
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp mayonnaise
• Freshly squeezed juice of ½ lime
• Salt & black pepper to taste

For sandwich:

• Iceberg or Romaine lettuce
• Bread of choice (Rye sourdough is perfect)

Method:

• Mix all the salad ingredients together in a bowl, with a fork, making sure not to over-process into a paste.
• The consistency should be well combined but chunky and flaky. Do not heat, keep cold.
• Construct the sandwich (or not) with lettuce (or not) and tuna salad in toasted bread.