My life lesson is just to be patient and everything will fall in place. Most of what's happened in my life is not to do with me but good people and the way things happened. So I feel it's no use stressing over anything. Let things simply happen.
Like a musician expresses himself through music and a writer's expression is in his writings, cooking is my mode of expression.
There are few relationships that give as unconditionally as food. I have opened and shut down restaurants and slept on the streets, but I have always bounced back because my belief in the relationship has been strong.
My learning from my travels is that taste is objective. If a thing is tasty, it's universally tasty. Or, just not.
I grew up in Lucknow, which is famous for its street food and kebabs. It was the street food and Lucknowi kebabs that inspired me. The culture of the varieties of food that I tasted as a child inspired me to be a cook.
You have to respect the culture you are cooking in, yes, but you have to respect the palate you are cooking for, too, and you have to adjust to that palate.
