Gaggan Anand He won the annual ‘Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants’ award. (Gaggan Anand- second from right) with his team.
Indian chef Gaggan Anand’s cuisine eatery in Thailand created history by winning Asia’s best restaurant award for the fourth consecutive year at a ceremony in China’s Macau city. He won the annual ‘Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants’ award and was presented at the Wynn Palace’s Grand Theatre in Macau on March 27.
A group of more than 300 leaders across Asia’s restaurant industry vote and decide the list of 50 best restaurants. “We have become a family, and that’s the best thing that has happened in the last six years of 50 Best,” Anand said while accepting the award. “We have young chefs taking over from the old ones. So it’s time for us to leave and you guys to take over,” he said. The Kolkata-born restaurateur takes inspiration from late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and believes it is the way you innovate that counts. “how you innovate in that 150 square meters that you have”. Japanese food restaurant Den occupied the second position. Launched in 2013, ‘Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants’ list is the regional version of the famous list of ‘The World’s 50 Best Restaurants’.
“The first year I won number one, everybody thought it was a fluke. Or we paid someone. I got these controversies, indirectly. The second year, we kept them quiet. The third year, we said, ‘shut the f*** up’. The fourth year, I’m ready to lose. I’ve had enough,” Annand told prestige newsmagazine day before the awards. Anand opened Gaggan in December 2010. Since then the restaurant has been repeatedly placed on the Restaurant’s The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. In 2014 it ranked 17th in the global rankings.
He plans to close Gaggan in 2020 to start a 10 seat restaurant that opens only on weekends in Fukuoka, Japan.
[With inputs from PTI]