Behind the Kitchen: Our Chef's Journey
Where It All Began
Chef Arjun grew up in a small village near Kottayam in Kerala, where food was more than sustenance — it was a language of love, celebration, and community. His grandmother's kitchen was his first classroom. By the age of seven, he could identify spices by smell alone — the sharp bite of black pepper, the sweet warmth of cinnamon, the citrusy zing of fresh curry leaves plucked from the tree in the backyard.
"My grandmother never used measurements," he recalls. "She cooked by instinct, by the colour of the oil, by the sound of the tempering. That is something no culinary school can teach you. You have to grow up in a kitchen like that."
The Turning Point
"I remember the exact moment," he says, leaning forward with the intensity that characterizes everything he does. "I was 16, watching a cooking show on a neighbour's television. A chef was plating a dish — just rice and fish curry, nothing fancy — but the way he arranged it, the care he took, the respect he showed the ingredients. I turned to my mother and said: this is what I want to do for the rest of my life."
His family was not pleased. In their village, cooking was not considered a viable career for a young man. His father wanted him to study engineering. His mother worried about the long hours and low pay. But Arjun was resolute. Against his family's wishes, he scraped together enough money to enrol in a culinary school in Bangalore.
Years of Grinding
The journey was far from glamorous. His first job was at a mid-range hotel in Bangalore, where he spent six months doing nothing but peeling onions and washing dishes. "I cried every night for the first month," he admits. "Not from the onions — from exhaustion and doubt. I wondered if I had made a terrible mistake."
But he stayed. He watched senior chefs closely, volunteered for extra shifts, and practised techniques in his tiny rented room using a single burner stove. Slowly, he moved up — from prep cook to line cook, from line cook to sous chef. Each kitchen taught him something new. A stint in Hyderabad taught him the art of biryani. A year in Goa introduced him to the Portuguese-influenced flavours of the coast. Six months in Kolkata opened his eyes to the sophistication of Bengali cuisine.
"Every great chef starts at the bottom," he reflects. "Those years of peeling, chopping, and scrubbing taught me patience and a deep respect for every single ingredient that enters my kitchen."
Finding His Voice
After a decade of working in other people's kitchens, Arjun felt ready to express his own vision. He returned to Kerala, spent three months cooking with his now-elderly grandmother, and emerged with a philosophy that would define his career: food should honour its roots while embracing the present.
He began experimenting — a traditional fish moilee reimagined with locally sourced barramundi and cold-pressed coconut oil, a classic aviyal elevated with hand-ground spice pastes and heirloom vegetables from organic farms. The dishes were familiar yet surprising, comforting yet refined.
A Philosophy of Food
Today, Chef Arjun's philosophy is simple but uncompromising: source locally, cook with love, present with pride. Every dish on our menu tells a story — of the farmer who woke at dawn to harvest the vegetables, the fisherman who braved the Arabian Sea for the catch, and the kitchen team that transforms these raw materials into edible art.
He works with twelve local farmers, visits the fish market himself twice a week, and insists that his team taste every component of every dish before it leaves the kitchen. "Consistency is not about machines and timers," he says. "It is about caring enough to check, every single time."
"Food connects people," he says quietly, watching his team plate the evening's first orders. "When someone takes that first bite and closes their eyes — that pause, that moment of pure pleasure — that is my greatest reward. Everything else is just noise."