When we walk into the 14-seater Masque Lab on a Sunday evening, we are greeted with the riff of the Eye of the Tiger over the soundbox. At one corner stands Gaggan Anand, six-foot-something, tapping his head and stirring his coffee to the beats of the 1982 chartbuster, looking less like a chef and more like a fighter warming up. Which, in a way, is exactly what Anand has been doing—sparring through the last decade or so against culinary orthodoxy, business partners, critics, what have you.
In 2010, the Kolkata-born chef set up Gaggan, the eponymous progressive Indian restaurant, in Bangkok. In five years, it was ranked Asia’s No 1 by World’s 50 Best, a definitive ranking of the top global restaurants. In the years that followed, it reclaimed the top spot five times, despite its two-year closure due to Covid and a public dispute with Anand’s former partners over the right to use his own name. As a result, he had to rechristen his restaurant Gaggan Anand before reverting to the original once he won the rights back. His big lesson for all aspiring chefs? “Register your brand first,” he says with a guffaw.
Anand now owns a portfolio of four restaurants—three in Bangkok: Aside from Gaggan, he has a collaboration with Louis Vuitton, a Mexican-Indian jugalbandi in Ms Maria & Mr Singh; and GohGan, a Fukuoka restaurant with Goh Fukuyama, one of Asia’s top chefs. At his flagship, a meal will set you back by 16,000 THB (about Rs44,000) plus taxes. But your credit card won’t buy you the magic ticket, some rub of the green might—Gaggan’s does a 14-seat, twice a day, four times a week meal, in what he calls the “most inaccessible restaurant”.
It was a dream he spoke about when Forbes India met the chef in 2019—at that point, his plan was to shut his acclaimed Bangkok eatery and head northwards to Fukuoka to start a 16-seater restaurant with Goh, where “each diner would be interviewed beforehand”. “That’s how exclusive it will be,” he had said back then. A year later, Covid struck, Gaggan had to down his shutters, his debts spiralled, and, on the personal front, had to battle a messy divorce.
Five years on, Anand has doused every fire he has had to fight. Gaggan is back as Asia’s No 1 and the world No 6, his collaboration with Louis Vuitton is ranked as Asia’s 31st best, and he is back in Mumbai doing a tango meal Varun Totlani, who leads the kitchen of Masque, ranked India’s No 1 restaurant by Asia’s 50 Best. The meal, priced at Rs50,000-plus-taxes, had 56 diners eating with their hands and licking their plate clean, quite literally (Lick It Up, anyone?).
Forbes India caught up with Anand between two seatings for a quick chat on building his brand, why eateries fail and why he has a no-formal-attire diktat at his Bangkok restaurant.
Edited excerpts:
Q. You've been Asia's No 1 restaurant five times in the last 10 years, and that’s not counting the couple of years you were shut during Covid. What makes your food stand out year after year?
It’s because we have kept innovating from the first to the last year. In those 10 years, our restaurant was open for eight, and we won the No 1 award five times. Every time you come to Gaggan, it’s a new restaurant. Today, it’s completely different from what it was last year. And next March-April, we are going to do a reconstruction of the restaurant. Innovation is success. That’s how we are.
Q. Are the ratings and awards important to you?
They are. Otherwise, you would not be taking this interview. I could say ‘Oh, I don’t care’, but I would be lying. I do care.
Q. The last time we met you, in 2019, you had told us your dream was to make the most inaccessible restaurant…
I've done it. At Gaggan in Bangkok. My dream has now come true. It's a 14-seater restaurant, we offer only eight services a week. We do 90, sometimes 100, covers in a week—people do this number in a day. It is still the most inaccessible restaurant. And more than that, I have also become very inaccessible.
Q. But why is being inaccessible important?
It's not for everyone. Is Forbes for everyone? I don't think so. Not everything is for everyone. We are part of this… I would not say exclusivity, but it's like once-in-a-life kind of a thing.
Q. At the same time, the website of your restaurant says formal attire isn’t welcome. How does that tie in with the whole inaccessible or exclusivity theme?
Why do we judge people with clothes? Especially in fine dining everywhere, you are judged by how you are, what you look, what bag she is carrying, how much she is going to spend on wine, your colour, your language. The lessons I have learnt are that people, the commoners, the simplest of people eating with hands on the street, a taxi driver, a rickshaw puller, a daily wager… them enjoying their food are also a part of fine dining. They also enjoy fine food. Fine dining is not about show-off, but it has become about show-off. And that's why I put that boundary that, in my restaurant, the richest and those that saved up to be here, are all equal. I bring down the boundaries first thing with my no-formal-attire rule.
Q. This is your third iteration. You had Gaggan, then Gaggan Anand and now it's back to Gaggan again.
Because I could not put my name, my ex-partners were playing with me. They registered my name, and it took me 10 years to win it back.
Q. What have been the key lessons in all these years of building a restaurant brand?
Now if I open a restaurant, the first thing I do is register the brand [laughs]. I always register the brand first. Even if there's a chef I allow, I won't let the chef own the brand.
Q. You’ve seen a lot of ups and downs. How would you say your idea of running a restaurant has evolved?
It’s made me a more thick-skinned, determined person. I do what I want to do. The more you put me down, the higher I go. In these years, I’ve become more mature and a less angry person. I’ve become more sensible. Not diplomatic, but being straightforward and not filtering it, but not being angry either. If someone takes me as an angry person, that's his fault. I am just straightforward.
Q. What do you mean by sensible as opposed to what you were earlier?
Before I was more emotional. And when you're young, as you will see with young political leaders, they start with anger. And that's why you need maturity in politics. I’ve gained that maturity through all the failures and the successes. You will not be successful unless you understand failure.
Q. What are some of the business lessons you got through that?
The biggest business lesson is either you're all in or you're all out—be it your heart, money, investment. Don't be half-half. And you're all in until you're all out. I don't believe in being safe. The problem in most restaurant businesses in India is that once they see the numbers, they say they don’t want to do this. But why Masque is so successful is because Aditi and Aditya [Dugar] and Varun [Totlani] have been all in and were always in. For most others, they say I want to be all in, but I also want to make sure the numbers are positive. And that’s why they never do well. You see how many billionaires have restaurants, how many cricketers have restaurants, how many celebrities have restaurants? Why do they fail? First, because they're not restaurateurs by heart. Second, they do it not out of passion, but out of their need to own something. And third, they're never all in.
Q. So, what makes a successful fine-dine restaurant?
In fine dining, if you do well, you make money. Creativity brings in profitability. First of all, in luxury, your charges are not nominal. There's always a big amount of money that comes in, and a guaranteed amount of money at that. When that guarantee comes in, you can build your business on that, and you can control your cost, because you know that losses or wastage is zero. Everything is consumed. So, it is simple economics.
The process is simple—what’s in is raw, it gets converted into something cooked, and that cooked product is sold. And, in this process, between your cooking to the selling, you already know that if I'm making 100 pieces of samosa, I'm going to sell 100 pieces, and the demand is 150 or so. Luxury has more profit than mass, I always say.
Q. You spoke about going all in–how do you convince your investors even when the numbers may not add up?
We’ve had no such problems at Gaggan, luckily. But when I went all in for my own restaurant, from Gaggan to Gaggan Anand to this Gaggan, I had to suffer a lot in Covid times. I said, I’m all in and I won’t serve vada pav to survive. So, I suffered.
Also Read: My dream is to make the world's most inaccessible restaurant: Gaggan Anand
Q. Copies of your dishes crop up everywhere—how do you deal with plagiarism?
I call it inspiration. I’m happy that people are using my ideas, whether it’s the ice block or reinventing the ghevar for the menu. People realise that we can make simple things great, and that’s part of our journey. We’ve had more than 400 creative dishes, and it’s a continuous process.
Q. What would you say has been your most creative idea?
There isn’t one. It’s like the iPhone. You won’t use version 1, when we’re on iPhone 17 now— that’s 17 times that the same idea has been rearranged and reimagined. Creativity is a continuous process.
Take our yogurt [explosion], for example. What we started with 15 years ago has taken on a completely new form today. That’s what I mean to say—you have a base, and then I put in my madness, my personality, my weirdness into the food. I was never a science student, so our process is to be human first.
Q. In the context of science, you recently said that you are anti-AI...
I'm still anti-AI. For those who want to save costs and make more money, it’s good for them, but not for us. If creativity in food becomes AI, then what is it? AI is not for smart people. It’s artificial intelligence. It’s to cut costs, cut corners and make profit.
If a security camera recognises your face, that’s one less security guard who is employed. His family loses a livelihood. We don’t think that way—we think that okay, I will put AI in my building and, say, I’ll save the salary of a hundred people, but that means the employer is getting richer, and so many people are going jobless.
It’s the same in cooking. If food is cooked by AI, then what are we here for? Food is human. Would you rather eat food cooked by AI or by your grandmother?
Q. How has the fine-dining scene in India evolved over the years?
Masque is the best example of what fine-dining has become. Ten years ago, Masque was not a restaurant—it was just an idea. And from there, they’ve built up and had a stubborn vision. Now every restaurant in India wants to create things like a chef’s table.
India is the future of fine-dine. The food was always fine. Now we’re working on the dining experience. People from all over the world are excited to come to India and eat at restaurants like Masque, Inja, Farmlore. Earlier, they would come to eat street food and fast food. That’s the biggest change.
About 15 to 20 years ago, parents wouldn’t send their kids to become chefs. Now, everybody wants to put on a chef’s coat and cook, whether it’s on TV or in a kitchen.
Q. You’re known as a rebel in the kitchen, and outside it. What’s next?
I’ve always been this, and I always will be. I cannot have any other plans. This is my identity, this is what I do. Either you like it or you don’t. I will live cooking and die cooking.
Q. What about setting up a restaurant in India?
I don’t know… let’s see.
First Published: Nov 12, 2025, 11:32
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