Hello everyone. My name is Ajeeth.

I’m the culinary director for The Residency group of hotels. We’re based out of Chennai and this is all my learning from our new restaurant that we opened up on the 20th floor.

The restaurant is called the Sky – curated Asian dining. We were awarded the restaurant awards for 2024 for the best rooftop dining in Chennai. It’s been almost just about less than a year, and it has been a great learning experience as we have opened up this new restaurant, it has shown a lot of facets as to how we need to go ahead, and how we look at our menus and how we need to at least once in two or three months relook at what we need to do with our menus and how we can make them better, maybe engineering them a little bit better and ensure that we cover a wide variety of people who are dining with us.

I think that’s an extremely important thing for us to succeed in today’s challenging world. Just to give you a brief background of the Sky curated Asian dining takes up local ingredients, and we kind of curate a menu inspired by Asia – Japan, Thailand, Orient, India. These are all influences that we take and we utilize for our menus. As we opened up we saw was a lot of our crowd were vegetarians.

There were a lot of people with dietary requirements. We had Vegans, we had Jains, and we had people who were coming and asking us gluten-free. I didn’t want it to be our standard hotel response of saying okay, I can make this for you, I can do that for you. I think we have to now reach a place where we have dishes available on the menu. And what we did was we picked up certain dishes. I mean even the team of chefs and even fnb sat down together and we identified about 15-20 dishes that we could immediately serve to the guests or recommend to the guests, that will be able to serve vegan, gluten-free or Jain. One clear example that we did was we were doing a take on a dahi Kabab. And we were that particular dish without great effort, we were able to convert it into a Vegan, or we were able to convert it into a Jain dish very easily.

Why do you why do I feel that the necessity for doing such a pivot in the restaurant is very important? As it’s become very very essential as our youth is developing as a country is growing, there are a lot of people who come in looking for specific diets and traditionally I have seen that our hotels, Hotel Brands generally say, okay, I will do a paneer for you or I’ll do a roti for you. Somewhere we are leaving the guests extremely unsatisfied that a menu is not being curated for that particular person. This leads us leads a lot of the guests who come in with these specific requirements and this is one thing that we have been able to do very well and which has given us customers who come back to us.

So I generally recommend this, as you are now building your new menus and you’re taking up new challenges in this. Let us have a specific column or a specific place where these dietary requirements are to be inserted along with the menu.

And so that also what is important for us is that we can train our team with these menus so that they can approach the guest. Our team has to have very specific input what these allergies, and be able to train our guests on specific requirements. Already mentioned I mentioned vegan. I’m sure that is one of the most one of the most sort. Some people have taken up the cause extremely strongly and they are also people who are willing to come and dine out as long as we can give them good food and we’re able to take care of those dietary requirements.

Vegan for those who are unaware, vegan food is where you do not utilise any kind of animal product even butter or honey for that matter to to make the food and if you actually look into our menu, there are foods that we are actually able to create without using an animal product. Even for that matter, you want to do a vegan Sushi, is extremely possible. And to be able to actually tell the guests, and tell them listen I have this on the menu, let me get that for you. It is an extremely satisfying thing for a guest who is coming with those beliefs to be able to hear that from you.

Also India is a country where we have various segments of people who have various choices of food who come in, and if we are able to give them, it definitely makes a better business sense to us. And this will definitely bring us repeated customers who will definitely dine with us again and again. Also it has become very very important that we also look for a lot of ingredients within our own locality. Aand there’s a lot of keen interest that we need to start paying to vegetarian food per se. One of the strong offerings that we need to bring in as we need to bring in strong offerings with into vegetarian food.

The challenge with vegetarian food where we come down as we suddenly suddenly start feeling that we want to give the vegetarian food as much value as we’re giving non-vegetarian. Somewhere this mindset remains that you know of the value of chicken can give or a value a mutton or a fishes with fish is giving. The importance that we give that the non-vegetarian products is not given to the vegetarian products. What I do generally recommend is that we actively go to the markets. See what are the vegetables available . That I’m sure if you at least visit the market at least once in 14 days, or at least if you speak to your suppliers regarding what are the regular other than the regular vegetables? What are the vegetables coming in the market? I’m sure we’ll be able to find really some really exciting really exciting vegetables that you would be able to utilize. We also seen that you could if you kind of do your menu refresh your menu once in two three weeks, I am sorry once in two three months. You’re able to do seasonal menus that you that can feature seasonal vegetables that are working well in that particular time. One of the examples is that we did was turmeric, is something that’s available during November January because of the Pongal Season, especially in Tamil Nadu and during that point of time we were able to use fresh turmeric. We were able to use turmeric leaves and we were able to do some dishes with that.

That added a lot of value to the vegetarian guest who comes and actually sees using seasonal vegetables. There’s a very strong message that we’ll be able to give that we’re able to support the community as well. One of the really unique ingredients that we were able to find was coconut shoots. In Tamil nadu the coconut shoots is used, people actually use it as a snacking item. The coconut shoots actually beautiful for making a beautiful curry as well with them. They really really set beautifully sit well with the Thai curry or with a with a coconut milk Curry. Well, they even go well with salads.

So I’m sure if you’re able to actually go out into the market. Look for new ingredients.It’s something that will be able to get dividends. Now if you go to the market and see actually about something called a four winged beans, that has started coming into the market now. If you’re able to take those dishes and you’re able to add into your menu, you’ll be definitely able to give a better value to the customer.

Also, there has been a shifting trend towards digital menus and I would definitely recommend a lot of people to move into digital menu. I know there will be a lot of old timers will always want to stick to the to the printed menus, but digital menu also give us a big advantage, where we’re able to kind of refresh them in every two or three month. And do it pretty easily without incurring the extra cost of actually printing a physical menu and these menus that you’re doing digitally can also be interactive. You can post good pictures on them, which they will be able to actually see they’re able to see the dish prior to it coming. It also means some extra pressure to the chefs where they have to actually actually ensure that what is being shown on the picture is actually what is going to be coming onto the plate. So that’s also extremely important to for you to set your standards as to how if your menu dish is going to be it’s just how your team has to be trained that every single time. The dish actually comes out in that particular fashion.

Also, there’s been a lot of Focus going on to cocktails and mocktails where people are actually asking for creative cocktails that are made from local ingredients. That’s also an extremely good place for chefs to actually kind of focus on I know chefs generally focus only on food, but cocktails also a beautiful place where you put focus and bring on. Utilize more beautiful ingredients to make beautiful cocktails. we’ve been able to do a we’ve been able to do a nice lemongrass cocktails where we use level lemongrass, we’ve been able to do clarify watermelon juice and be able to use that. So there’s some beautiful techniques that are there in the cocktail making world as well that I think can help chefs also increase their creativity as far as food is concerned.

I would like to of course advice every chef every new chef who is coming to the industry coming into the field that they pay attention a lot of attention to the ingredients that we are getting. The ingredients that we’re getting actually wins us 60 70% of the battle, of of giving fresh food. Is really won by how we are handling our ingredients whether they’re vegetarian, non-vegetarian the ingredients place of extremely key role for us to be able to serve good food. If you’re able to understand the ingredient if you’re able to understand the flavor profile of the ingredient if you’re able to understand how how the ingredient works Then that actually helps us give good food. And also you’re able to understand the seasonality of the vegetable or whatever material you are using. To be able to create a good seasonal menu This this is a thing.

I feel that we should start doing on a regular basis.