Vikas Khanna, a rising star in the swirling world of New York restaurants, is also an object of desire. He talks, rather embarrassed, about a photo shoot he recently did with his shirt off for a "sexiest man" feature in People magazine.
The 36-year-old chef has been featured on a popular American TV show, Kitchen Nightmares, where he swooped in with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to save an ailing Indian restaurant in Manhattan. Now he works there as an executive chef, and spends his spare time managing special banquets for celebrities like Salman Rushdie, setting up charity fundraisers and writing cookbooks.
Khanna has some off-the-wall ideas. He makes tandoori peaches, chocolate idli soufflé and paan flavored kulfi. But don't call his food fusion: "Indian food itself is so fusion," he says, having so many influences over the centuries. Trained in classical French cooking, he tries to create "a little surprise element" by keeping the ingredients traditional but using different methods to prepare the dishes. He's not shy about boasting of the time he floored magazine food critics by using a French method of stuffing the skin of chicken (while leaving the whole thing intact) with masala and mushrooms, then cooking it in a tandoor.
Khanna's fingers, spotted with knife scars, are tribute to his perseverance. Due to a childhood accident, his left eye has a clot that hinders his eyesight, so he's constantly cutting his fingers as he cooks. A foundation he started, Sakiv (South Asian Kid's Infinite Vision) creates awareness about vision disorders in children and sponsors Braille libraries across the world.
Before he came to the United States in 2001, Khanna ran a successful family catering business in Amritsar, Punjab, for many years, and also worked at some of India's best hotels including the Leela Group in Mumbai, Maharashtra. In New York, he worked as a dishwasher before climbing up the ladder to be an executive chef. The main obstacle for the average Indian restaurant, he says, is fear. "All my life I'll be categorizing myself as Indian," but that doesn't mean he can't get out of a comfort zone and try new dishes and new
ways of thinking about the food.
The 36-year-old chef has been featured on a popular American TV show, Kitchen Nightmares, where he swooped in with celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay to save an ailing Indian restaurant in Manhattan. Now he works there as an executive chef, and spends his spare time managing special banquets for celebrities like Salman Rushdie, setting up charity fundraisers and writing cookbooks.
Khanna has some off-the-wall ideas. He makes tandoori peaches, chocolate idli soufflé and paan flavored kulfi. But don't call his food fusion: "Indian food itself is so fusion," he says, having so many influences over the centuries. Trained in classical French cooking, he tries to create "a little surprise element" by keeping the ingredients traditional but using different methods to prepare the dishes. He's not shy about boasting of the time he floored magazine food critics by using a French method of stuffing the skin of chicken (while leaving the whole thing intact) with masala and mushrooms, then cooking it in a tandoor.
Khanna's fingers, spotted with knife scars, are tribute to his perseverance. Due to a childhood accident, his left eye has a clot that hinders his eyesight, so he's constantly cutting his fingers as he cooks. A foundation he started, Sakiv (South Asian Kid's Infinite Vision) creates awareness about vision disorders in children and sponsors Braille libraries across the world.
Before he came to the United States in 2001, Khanna ran a successful family catering business in Amritsar, Punjab, for many years, and also worked at some of India's best hotels including the Leela Group in Mumbai, Maharashtra. In New York, he worked as a dishwasher before climbing up the ladder to be an executive chef. The main obstacle for the average Indian restaurant, he says, is fear. "All my life I'll be categorizing myself as Indian," but that doesn't mean he can't get out of a comfort zone and try new dishes and new
ways of thinking about the food.
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