Gaggan Anand: A rebel...with a cause in Bangkok

I met Gaggan Anand for the first time last October in Paris when he cooked with Bruno Verjus, at Table, and I must admit that when I saw him that afternoon, very relaxed, walking into the restaurant, eating a snack, I said to myself: "we`re in trouble!" All the inimitable things that happened afterwards, the dishes we tasted, the stories that accompanied them and the sweeping persona of Bruno sipping on the heretic Gaggan, fascinated me immensely. Very much so. So when he invited me to Bangkok to try his restaurant, I said yes and didn`t regret it for a moment.

Gaggan Anand is a tremendous yet terminally unconventional figure on the global culinary scene. He is more like a rock star than a chef. After all, that was his dream: to become a professional drummer in a band and make money by doing it.

He did his fun in another capacity, and it didn`t come off badly. He became known globally when Chef`s Table on Netfix devoted one of its admittedly best episodes to him. Still, gaggan had already attracted countless stares for his work at his first eponymous restaurant in Bangkok. There, he directed an innovative show that would star the cuisine of his native India in an eccentric, refined dining version infused with his dramatic take on gastronomy. The restaurant then earned two stars from the Michelin Guide and twice topped Asia`s 50 Best Restaurants, but in 2019 it closed, leaving many of its fans scratching their heads at this development.

Eventually, two years later, although Gaggan flirted quite a bit with moving to Tokyo, which he considers his second - not to mention first - home, he returned to Bangkok and reopened the restaurant in a new post. The script remains much the same as the old Gaggan Anand, although now enriched with Japanese influences, the seats around the open kitchen bar have been reduced to 14, and the show he puts on with his team inevitably becomes more intense and personal. The great thing about Gaggan is that although he treats the kitchen as a stage, knowing full well that he is the ultimate protagonist, he only plays himself when this experience begins. I say this with all certainty because I experienced him quite a bit in Bangkok, so I find it fascinating to see a celebrity chef wearing no mask to hide something or impersonate something he is not when the action starts in front of an audience.

The almost three-hour meal is dressed up with music played by the chef from his iPad, divided into two parts. It consists of 22 stages - bites that pass on messages hold surprises and mostly prick the brain neurons, and at least half are delicious. The waffle with foie gras and Irish Coffee, the lollipop with scallop ice cream, the eggplant...in "various shades", the grilled kuruma shrimp in konro and a novel five-year aged rice with rare mushrooms were very high-level compositions that raised the performance counter to the heavens, although from such a menu it is difficult to isolate stages since each one serves something. Coming to the finale, let me say that this "dinner" touched inner chords and resonated with subtle emotional frequencies I didn`t expect it to catch. Of course, it may have helped that I was utterly let loose on an unfamiliar "ride" with stormy images of an alien world I had no interest in resembling my own.

For this and many other reasons, I count Gaggan Anand among the top experiences of the year and would recommend it with closed eyes to anyone planning a trip to Bangkok.

Score: 8.5 / 10