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James Beard Award for Chef Vishwesh Bhatt of Snackbar

 

Vishwesh Bhatt’s food is All-American, all-Southern and yet, it has a distinctive flavor, echoes of the Indian spices he grew up with, and the fragrance and memory of these have never left him

There is something to be said about the power of persistence. Vishwesh Bhatt  become the first Indian-American to win the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award for best chef from the South, after five nominations as finalist in the past. This year in the crowded and festive Lyric Hall in Chicago, at the Oscars of the food world, Bhatt, Executive Chef of Snackbar won the Award for the Best Chef in the South

The James Beard Foundation’s mission is “to celebrate, nurture, and honor chefs and other leaders making America’s food culture more delicious, diverse, and sustainable for everyone.” This year Bhatt, the only Mississippi chef nominated, won over several well-known Southern chefs.

Bhatt, 52, who hails from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, won not for Indian food but for the food of Mississippi, the food his neighbors eat and love. For the last 20 years Bhatt has been executive chef at Snackbar, a much loved French/Southern bistro

Yes, Bhatt’s food is All-American, all-Southern and yet, it has a distinctive flavor, echoes of the Indian spices he grew up with, and the fragrance and memory of these have never left him.

The son of a nuclear physicist and a homemaker, he grew up in a family which loved food and both his grandmother and mother were excellent cooks.  “From a young age, it was something which made me very happy. One of my favorite memories is always of mom making puran poli, a sweet flatbread. She would start cooking the dal and she would add the cardamom and spices – the whole house would be fragrant – you could tell from a couple of blocks away that she was making it today – you could smell the ghee and spices – I would go and park myself right next to her so I could get that really warm feeling.”

As he recalls, the dal had been cooked with the sugar and the spices, and he would fill up a katori and start eating. He says, “ Puran poli also signified that it was a festive occasion so the anticipation of the gathering that was going to happen, added more excitement.”

Another vibrant memory he has is of accompanying his father and sometimes his uncle to the market which was overflowing with fresh produce.  He recalls, “That was a Sunday ritual for us – my father and I would take the city bus. We would then walk to the market and we would buy whatever was in season and then stop for kulfis.  We would take the rickshaw back rather than the bus, since we had bags.”

From Gujarat, the family moved to France for a year and then to the US in 1986.  Bhatt was still in high school and he had no idea that food would become his profession and his passion. Yet the early interactions with his mother’s kitchen and the family meals, the spices and produce in the markets had already become a part of his sub-conscious and ethos.

From small-town life in Gujarat to winning the James Beard medal for best chef in the glittering ceremony held at the Lyric Opera of Chicago may seem quite incredible. The Best Chef award recognizes the chefs from different regions of the US, and the South encompasses Alabama, Arkansas, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

According to The James Beard Foundation, the chefs nominated “set high culinary standards and also demonstrate integrity and admirable leadership skills in their respective regions. A nominee may be from any kind of dining establishment but must have been working as a chef for at least five years, with the three most recent years spent in the region.”

Bhatt, while studying political science at the University of Mississippi , started working with the noted chef John Currance, whose City Grocery Group owns several restaurants in Oxford and with whom he’s worked for 22 years.  He found he had a natural aptitude for cooking and so he attended the culinary school at Johnson & Wales University and later came back to Oxford and joined Snackbar as chef.

He has spent 10 years at Snackbar, and has built up a loyal following of diners. How does he combine Southern food with his Indian influences? He says, “I cook southern food with what produce I have available – that’s how I grew up, using whatever was on hand and I happen to season  it with spices I grew up with. People in town have received it really well.”

Snackbar has dishes like Wild Caught gulf Shrimp and Steak Frites but also Pea Chaat and Vidalia Onion Bhaji on the menu. Bhatt’s is the regional Southern cuisine and he uses a lot of seafood and local produce from the farmers. Over the years with the changes in population, Southern food has become eclectic, multi-cultural, a melting pot of flavors. So it is only fitting that an Indian chef is adding the spices of his birthplace to his adopted land, adding a new flavor to traditional foods of the South.

According to Mississippi Today, Bhatt thinks of himself as a Southern chef because his style of cooking represents where he is now, but references his Indian roots. As he says, “My heritage and where I grew up is very much a part of me, but this is home and this is what I do. I’m a Southern chef. I’m from here.”

Bhatt told me he doesn’t go looking for exotic ingredients but cooks with what’s available, yet the taste will be somewhat different. He gives the example of something as innocuous as cornbread – one person’s grandmother will make it differently from another’s grandmother: “The way I cook is influenced by where I grew up, just as others will be influenced by where they grew up.”

And yet the past is so much a part of him that he says he does have two homes: he goes to India regularly with his wife Teresa to be with his larger extended family and share the pleasure of meals together,  as in his childhood days. In Oxford, he and Teresa like to whip up simple meals at home – often just kicheri, dal and pickles.

He finds that there is so much similarity between the American South and the India of his youth. He loves working with greens and okra, which are well-loved in Southern cooking too as well as chilies, lime, black eyed peas, and the tortillas which are so much like Indian rotis.

They all speak of home and indeed both cultures value family closeness and family meals eaten together. For Vishwesh Bhatt, Gujarat and Mississippi are not that far away.

(This article first appeared in my column India in America in CNBCTV18.com)

Vishwesh Bhatt: The South I Love from Southern Foodways on Vimeo.

Chef Vishwesh Bhatt wins James Beard Award @beardfoundation
His food is All-American, all-Southern & yet, has a distinctive flavor, echoing the Indian spices he grew up with. https://t.co/ogSi7w6CJIhttps://t.co/TTNWxXNSUF #snackbar #indianfood pic.twitter.com/etDBPMEtNU

— Lavina Melwani (@lavinamelwani) May 27, 2019

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