Chef Who Cooked For Bollywood Stars & Paris Hilton Brings Royal Indian Cuisine To S’pore

Opulent yet playful setting at Shikar

At Shikar at The Maxwell Reserve, where one escapes into a cocoon of maximalist decor and old-world glamour to feast on cuisine inspired by the heyday of the Indian royals, Singh, known for his stints on Indian television including Masterchef, designs menus to impress, drawing from his many years of working at top hotels and restaurants across India. 

If Indian food plated fine-dining style makes you irrationally angry, then the set menus are not for you. But the dishes, including hearty favourites like the lamb shank braised in aromatic spices, rose petals and saffron, or the humble dal makhani slow-cooked for hours which, according to Singh, “people say is the best in the world they’ve eaten”, are on point in flavour and texture.

“Shikar celebrates the regal India, the grandeur and luxury, with a new lens of today, keeping in mind and respecting our global audiences and bringing the latest trends in provenance of food and techniques, and also with the dietary needs of today's global audience in mind,” said the 52-year-old, who was born in Amritsar in Punjab but grew up in Odisha because of his father’s job as a fighter jet engineer. 

“Though we bring pan-Indian flavours, we're celebrating the hero dishes in our own way, through my lens, but keeping it honest and grounded when it comes to flavours, using international techniques and the global produce that I get here.”

He’s also incorporated a few locally inspired elements, like baking and serving sea bass wrapped in lotus leaf. “It imparts a subtle fragrance to it, an earthiness. I love that sort of humbleness to the whole dish… And I think it looks so artsy. It is so crafted, rather than just cooking the fish in a stainless steel pan.”

Plans to be in S’pore each quarter

You won’t see him at the restaurant every day, but Singh plans to be in Singapore every quarter to oversee Shikar as well as its sister restaurant, the more casual Gupshup at The Serangoon House hotel. 

Based in London with his wife and daughter, where he runs a gastropub called The Great Indian, Singh also has a consultancy company called Jolly Good Hospitality. His schedule is packed as he has projects all around the world including in Qatar and the Maldives, where he recently cooked for Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai.

Cooking for megastars is par for the course for Singh, who began rubbing shoulders with A-listers during his time as the head chef of Saffron at the JW Marriott in Mumbai. His regulars included Kareena Kapoor, who “loves her biryani and her kebabs”.

He was, notably, also head chef for Paris Hilton when she visited the hotel in 2011 to launch her line of bags and accessories. She was all about “authentic, healthy” food, he recalled. “I remember having cooked duck biryani for her, which is very unusual in Indian cuisine. We had to confit the duck for hours. She was in my kitchen, and we were cooking for her. She was very friendly.”

Some of the biggest Bollywood stars prefer simple dishes

Singh has also presided over grand events like family weddings planned for Madhuri Dixit and Sunil Shetty, and celebration parties with Salman Khan and Hrithik Roshan, who is “very specific about barbecues, kebabs and tandoor preparations”.

But, many of the superstars he’s cooked for are actually partial to the simplest of dishes. For example, “Amitabh Bachchan, a vegetarian, loves ‘ghar ka khana’, which is homestyle food with no fluff and no fuss”, especially yellow dal tadka and slow-roasted okra, which is featured in Shikar’s rotating thali menus. “Cooking for him was very enjoyable and he is very down-to-earth and humble,” Singh said.

Similarly, Anil Kapoor and Anupam Kher “love their saag, which is spinach done nicely in our own Punjabi style, with their malai tikkas, which is chicken marinated in cream cheese and roasted in the tandoor over charcoal and embers”.

The cuisine passed down through India’s real-life royal families is also surprisingly humble, Singh shared.

When he cooked with the late Arvind Singh of the kingdom of Mewar at his palace in Udaipur, for example, they made an okra dish by “smoking and reducing tomatoes with garlic and very subtle herbs, and filling the okra with it, and steaming it in buttermilk”. 

Singh was taken aback by how delicate it was. “You don’t find this dish on any menu anywhere in the globe or in Indian cuisine. I thought, ‘Wow.’ The tomatoes were being grated by hand. You've never heard of grating tomatoes, have you? They were treating the ingredients gently to get the best out of them.”

Although Singh has studied all aspects of Indian cuisine from street food to palace feasts, he’s still learning as he goes, he said. He’s also inspired by his travels. “I think Singapore sits at the top, because I love the culture here. I love the mixed nationalities. I love the eating out. The culture of people going out and eating is, I think, very obvious, compared to any other place. I've met so many people here, and they associate [themselves] with great food, which is what I love.”

When he’s not in the kitchen, he’s motoring, climbing, jet skiing and dune bashing. “It keeps me always on my feet. I always love to bring 10,000 volts of energy into my kitchen,” he said. And, “For me, everybody is a celebrity. I think that sort of energy drives me.”

Shikar is located at 2 Cook Street, Maxwell Reserve, S078857. Open daily 12pm to 2.30pm, 6pm to 10pm. More info via Instagram.

Photos: Shikar

Source: CNA/my

The original version of this story first appeared in CNA Lifestyle.

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