Gresham Fernandes Just Wants to Cook for You
Gresham Fernandes is a culinary maverick who refuses to be boxed in. Rebellious yet rooted, with an aversion to culinary pretension, his food is a mix of bold technique and storytelling; a visionary who cooks for the sheer joy of feeding people.
As you enter the wooden neon blue doors of Bandra Born in Bandra's reclamation Christian ghetto, the enduring tones of the 90s anthem blares, The Verve’s Bitter Sweet Symphony. This restaurant is a re-iteration of the old Salt Water Café that stood there for well over a decade. The sun pours in through the jaali motif glass reflecting off Irani café style mirrors leaning on the ceiling — flooding the restaurant with natural light.
Bandra Born is undoubtedly an extension of a millennial living room that meets Bombay style design elements, but with fabulous small plates of nostalgia that keep arriving at the table courtesy of a certain Chef Gresham Fernandes. The playlists spanning the best of western classic and progressive rock music too are his doing, he proudly tells me, “People once asked us for recipes of dishes, they now ask for the playlist.” Gresham’s cooking and food is characterised by flavours rooted in his upbringing (largely between Bandra and Goa) but with the finesse of Michelin star finery. His food travels around the world inform the cuisine he’s pushing towards — modern but local. While maintaining that “food still has to taste good” whatever fancy techniques applied and whichever elevated ingredient used.
Gresh Takes A Knife To It
Gresham at Jude Bakery, 2016. Image by Tanvi Joshi.
Gresh, as he’s affectionately referred to by his friends in the restaurant industry, is one of those people who are always either thinking about food or cooking it. The words rebellious and obsessed are routinely thrown around when referring to him. “In the early days of Salt Water, when everyone else was following the rules, doing great classic dishes – Gresh wanted to take the knife to everything, take it apart.” according to Riyaaz Amlani, Founder and Managing Director of Impresario that runs Bandra Born with Gresham. Amlani has worked with Gresham since the early days of Bombay’s Café Mocha and Salt Water Grill. “I’ve met all types of chefs but this guy — he’s just different. He’s simple, he’s honest, he’s no bullshit and he’s a genius. He brings with him this rebellious spirit, a love for his roots and being a Bandra boy — makes him a very unique chef.” said Amlani.
“There’s a time and place for tasting menus, Bandra Born is not that place. Lick your plate if you want. Bring the kids to the restaurant. The more, the merrier.” quips Gresham, as we speak. It’s important to remember that we’re now in the age of Michelin stars and restaurant awards. Talking about your menu, creating narratives and experiences around dining are perhaps elements that are now equally if not more important than the food itself. The constant omnipresence on social media too dictates your fate as a chef. Gresham is perhaps an anomaly in that regard, refreshingly removed from the mores of social media. Not cooking for the ’gram. Real-er somehow, closer to the ground reality of harsh hot kitchens that demand back breaking work and empowering your team of cooks to produce perfect plates of food. “The act of cooking every day and considering ourselves cooks, is what has kept us going strong.” said Manoj Shetty, Gresham’s chef and colleague at Impresario of many years. “There are no shortcuts when working with him. Gresh knows exactly what he wants flavour wise. You’ve got to be quick.” This hyper-awareness is the quality he seeks from his team of cooks versus those who’ve “staged here and staged there[1]” with acclaimed chefs. “It’s the trenches. Hot oil burns happen. Got to have spatial vision in the kitchen. You need real muscle memory to move.” Gresham refers to Manoj jokingly as his first wife and told me, “We’ve been working together for 17 years and have no conversations in the kitchen. We know what’s wrong by just looking at each other”.
Gresham Fernandes at the Food Nerd Festival, Bengaluru
Manoj Shetty at the Food Nerd Festival, Mumbai
Gresham’s resume needs no introduction. After spending a number of years at Salt Water, he felt compelled to push the boundaries, learn more. “He needed to go out there, to develop, to grow.” said Amlani. Gresham travelled, eating his way around Europe and Japan. He staged in the hallowed halls of Noma, pushing his craft outside of the usual Indian dining comfort zone. His contemporaries and competition are also his friends, often finding themselves cooking up hearty meals on open fires together while speaking of their last fantastic meal. No surprises then that Amlani refers to Gresham as the chef of chefs, “If you ask the top chefs in the country — Thomas, Manish, Prateek, Hussain, Alex — who their favourite chef in India is– they’ll all say Gresh”.
Seminal Moments in a Culinary Career
Amlani insists that if you speak to Gresham about anything other than food, his eyes will over roll backwards but will light up when you speak on his favourite subject — food. I can confirm — Gresham is bursting with food stories. He has glint in his eyes as he discusses Dario Ceccinis butchering technique and his favourite meal in the world at Mugaritz in San Sebastian. His influences come from the usual culinary greats — The French Laundry’s Thomas Keller and El Bulli’s Albert and Ferran Adria. He also speaks of the simplicity with which Christian Puglisi of Baest, Copenhagen cooks through his book Relae.
“It was a seminal moment for him, as we were on the bus ride in Spain. I could see a change happen in him when he realized what was possible in food.” said Amlani.
Juxtaposed with the harshness of a professional kitchen, Gresham still exhibits a childlike enthusiasm about food and you can taste it in all of those Bandra themed plates. The more I investigate, the more I’m told that there’s no secret sauce to it. “It’s great cooking, great technique, great prep, great flavour combinations.” said Amlani. “Because of the way he plates food — presented in a seemingly sloppy manner — it belies the technique that has gone into it.”
His regulars are enamoured with his playful take on seemingly basic Bandra fare –the Hearsch Puff, the croissant pav with crab curry. All originating from Bandra institutions we’ve grown up eating at, with versions of their food that show up on the Bandra Born menu. That's kind of the point. Entirely familiar flavours but just somehow better. Do things really need to be replicated when the original still exists? Perhaps, yes.
Many others have been undone by his take on the Venus jam cake, an institution of a bakery that happens to be in the neighbourhood. "Bandra Born is about remembering your childhood. It's the past, present and future."
Gradnmother' Fanny’s Prawn Dish, Bandra Born.
Mutton panroll at Bandra Born.
A child of working parents, Gresham speaks of how he grew up at the knees of his nanna — his primary caregiver as his parents went to work — picking up knives and all manner of kitchen skills by the early age of 5. Both his parents cook. His mom unsurprisingly also bakes. "There was no fear of the kitchen or sharp objects." He grew up in the bustling Christian communities across Bandra and Goa, many that cooked, baked and routinely catered for the various weddings, christenings and funerals alike. “Everyone always had large kitchens and were always cooking.”
Ava’s Sous Chef
He tells me how he’s trying to slowly develop his daughter Ava’s young palate, helping her build her own relationship with food as she grows up. “Marlene and Ava are not big on food — simple eggs and cheese in the morning, maybe pancakes and they’re happy. But I’ve introduced them to the good cheese, the good bread and regional stuff like Ambemohar rice. If they want to eat potato chips, I’ll buy the potatoes and fry them at home.” His wife Marlene, tells me that Gresh at home is Ava’s sous chef. “They do the most mundane things together. Create dishes that she feels are ‘awesome’ and should be made in his restaurant.”
Despite the finery he’s now surrounded by, a table full of people gathered together — eating, engaging, telling stories about food is where his heart is. He considers himself a cook rather than a chef. "I'm not a PR guy. I just want people around a table, eating good food." This sort of commensality lies at the core of Gresham’s cooking. “At home, my nanna cooked for everybody, nobody sat in the hall. Everyone was gravitating towards the kitchen and it was the hub for everything, it had an open plan – we all ate in the kitchen, huddled around the food.”
With his family largely in Goa, he speaks of a utopia where everyone's invited to break bread together. "That's my goal. Close to the Western ghats. A place where people can come and stay. Everyone's allowed — dogs, cats, kids.” A few fires going. One with a large vat of water boiling for all intents and purposes, all day. Another perhaps to roast meat in his favorite Argentinian asador style. "A fire to warm and a fire to feed"
Gresham’s just the Bandra boy next door and he just wants to cook for you. I suggest you let him.
[1] Stagiaire – A Stagiaire is the French word for an unpaid trainee or intern who works in a professional kitchen to learn how to become a Chef.
Amrita Amesur is corporate lawyer who writes about food. You can follow her food adventures on Instagram.
Photographs by Nachiket Pimprikar
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