Chef Ritu Dalmia

Rockin´, Rollin´ & Cookin´!

A chef with a happy disposition just has to be a chef whose cooking is bound to have many happy and smiling fans. Ritu Dalmia is on a roll, 25 years into her career and the diva is having a great time herself!



Text: Farzana Contractor

I can only compare exuberant, effervescent Ritu to champagne! With a halo of a zillion bubbles bursting all around her, she is a rockstar of a human being! Happy, funny, talkative, she lives life candidly, in her own sphere, on her own terms. With her, what you see is what you get. No room for pretentions of any kind. She can be arrogant, she can be self-deprecating, but above all she can be honest. And she is, 99% of the time. The 1% that she may not be is due to the generous nature she possesses. She may not want to hurt someone.
Ritu Dalmia is happy doing what she does best; cooking! She has no formal culinary degree, yet we address her as "chef´.Which is in itself quite irrelevant today for quite simply, she has gone way beyond titles and labels and adages of any kind. Look at her experience, look at her passion for all things food and wine. Here is a woman in her mid 40s, who has cooked her way into the hearts of gourmets via their stomachs, while only just 21 years. That´s right, Ritu Dalmia started her very own restaurant in Delhi at that tender age. Mezza Luna, a Mediterranean eatery with Italian leanings which really rocked the capital city.
You may wonder how such a young woman would have had the gumption to actually launch her own restaurant way back in 1993, with no formal degree, no genetic backing, cooking up European fare for the richie-rich Indian foodie. Let me tell you. The "gumption´ came from the confidence that comes from international travelling. Not as a tourist but as a business traveller. Ritu was just 16 when she started to work with her dad, a big-time Calcutta Marwari importer of exclusive marble and other stones. Soon she was travelling to South America, Egypt and Italy. On her very own! Like she says, her dad just threw her to the wolves! Well, the wolves did not, could not, devour her and she came through with flying colours. Did great business for her dad and more importantly, fell madly, truly and fully in love with Italian cuisine that she was so exposed to during her numerous business sojourns all over Italy.  So at the end of her four-year stint with dad and the business, Mezza Luna was a logical conclusion. While the restaurant was a runaway success, the till was not ringing as it should have. I can only assume Ritu was having such a blast cooking up a storm in her kitchen, shelling out on expensive ingredients bought in Italy, she may not have noticed, or if she did, she did not give two hoots that Mezza was bleeding. It was great till it lasted, but then the Marwari blood in her veins woke her up and she shut shop.
But at least she had found her true calling. Cooking was her forte. And running a restaurant her passion, except she now had the urge to go westward. And so went right ahead and opened Vama, an Indian restaurant in London. Which again did well, was an enormous success, this time even financially, but then Ritu decided after four and a half years to opt out from London. Personal reasons, read love, matters of the heart, a good woman, lured her back to India. Besides, a new restaurant was stirring in her soul. The year was 2000, the big Millenium year and Diva was launched! For a year she commuted between London and Delhi and then decided enough is enough, she sold Vama and came to stay put in Delhi full-time. She was done with all the intensive travelling she had been going through for the past so many years. She was happy to be home. And so were the diners of Delhi, it would seem. She was back in the Indo-Italian saddle.
Now there was nothing to hold Ritu back. A celebrity chef was born. And she was being feted and fussed upon. In the days when Italian food just meant pizza and pasta of a very basic kind, here was this new kid
on the culinary block rustling up serious Italian food made from authentic Italian ingredients she would shop for in Italy and lug back as hand luggage! In Bombay where I had also just launched UpperCrust (January 2000), I started to hear the buzz about Diva, this fantastic new restaurant was really creating waves. Soon I was winging it to Delhi and I found myself lunching with Ritu. We were doing a feature on her in our very first year!
Well, Ritu Dalmia has come a long way. Deservedly. So what started with Mezza Luna and Vama, metamorphosed into Diva, Caf&eacute Diva, Caf&eacute at ICC (Italian Cultural Centre), Latitude 28, Diva Spiced, Caf&eacute Diva Sangam and Diva Goa. There is also Cittamani in Milan, Italy and Stella in a boutique hotel called Linthwaite House in Windermere in the Lake District, UK. So what does that count up to? Nine restaurants and one woman! One hell of a woman, I´d say, a woman I´d like you to get to know better...
"I am sick, you know, I am mad and going madder," bursts out Ritu, on the phone with me. I have called her on WhatsApp for I have no idea which part of the world she is in. A few days ago when I had checked she was in London and then I had heard she was heading south to launch Diva in Goa, but Milan needed her attention, and Delhi was crying for her presence, there was a big fat wedding that her outdoor catering company was handling the banquet for! Well, viva la telephone, distances don´t matter, and we had a fun, energy-driven, talkathon.
Sick! Mad! Insane! Crazy! These were terms Ritu was using to convey to me her addiction to work, her penchant for opening new restaurants. "You know I must be a total lunatic, I say something and do just the opposite. I say no more restaurants and then I sign the contract for Diva Goa!" To which I vehemently chide her, how could she go and open a Diva in Goa when I have been waiting for her to open one in Bombay? "Not fair," I complain in mock anger. "Believe me," she goes into defense mode, "Goa was never on the charts! I had zero plans to open a Diva there. It was just the result of one drunken evening at my home in Goa just two and a half months ago!" Apparently, a friend whose resort was soon going to open in North Goa convinced her, at this "drunken´ evening, to come aboard, launch Diva Goa.Ritu in an easy, breezy, happy state agreed to do so and promptly forgot about it the next morning. Three days later she was most stumped when the contract appeared on her table for signatures! It was too late to beg off! The deed had to be done. She had given, err slurred, her consenting words and now she must abide. But that´s Ritu for you. Impulsive, yet responsible. And now a fine dining Diva awaits you at Andores Resort at Calangute. This, even as Ritu laments, has ruined Goa for her, forever. Beloved Goa was her escape route, her home in a village, was her hideaway, a secret that was kept away from prying eyes and the paparazzi, it was somewhere she went away for rest and relaxation and now Goa spells work, as in all capitals – WORK!
Ritu may pretend she is driving herself up the wall, catching flights here and there every other day, but you know what, she is enjoying it all and she is never gonna stop.Hectic schedules, stress, madness, swear words not withstanding. Ask her about it and she quotes Anthony Bourdain, ""What do I hate about my job? Long hours, anti-social lifestyle, heat, pressure, noise, stress. Give me a few drinks and ask me what are the things I love about my job – long hours, anti-social lifestyle, heat, pressure, noise, stress. These things are challenging, but they are also what give me the rush."´
 Ritu is more than a chef. She is a talented cartoonist and a songster who can´t sing a note but who loves music and compiles the most amazing playlists to suit any and every mood. She would have been a DJ if she hadn´t been a chef, she says! Asked to describe herself, she goes, "I´d say I am funny. My wit is what saves the day for me. I am generous, impulsive, yes I am impatient, a total control freak and finally I have become like my dad, a workaholic!"
It´s a trait she never wanted to pick up, but the papa´s girl did. Ritu, who lost her dad only very recently, loved him dearly. She is what she is because of him. His encouragement, his confidence in her, his understanding of her sexual preference. His love and guidance allowed her to bloom, follow her heart, her passion. How many fathers can you think of who would send a box of mangoes as a token of acceptance, to the partner of his daughter who had come to him the previous evening and informed him she was gay, shocking him sufficiently enough. Also speaks of Ritu´s strong character, she would prefer to be the one to go tell her parents her truth, the one she discovered when she was 23, rather than let them discover it accidentally. In the same strain, it is admirable of her to have filed a PIL in the courts against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a couple of years ago. "Freedom," she says, "has to come from within ourselves. I live in an urban environment and carry no shame but it is horrifying how badly some people are treated because of their sexuality. Do we want India to be a Nigeria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia? Is that the progressive, modern India we aspire to? The Constitution talks of freedom to love and then we have something as regressive as Article 377. It´s sad that when homosexuality was criminalised in 2013, the judge said he had never met a gay person in his entire life. That´s why we filed the petition. We wanted people to wake up and smell the coffee. If things are to change, it has to begin with each one of us." Well said, dear girl.
All that apart, Ritu is a chef first, the rest doesn´t matter. And she is a damn good chef. You have to know how early she discovered she likes cooking. When she was nine. "And who do you think I cooked for?" she asks, and answers, "My parents. Poor guys, how they endured... I would cook macaroni with baked beans in Amul butter, all the time. And since I had learnt about the concept of three course meals, I would cut the macaroni in different shapes and present them in tiny portions as three different courses!!" guffaws Ritu, at the childhood memory.
She also recalls taking money from her mum´s purse and sneaking out to go buy piles of Tarla Dalal cookery books. "Oh, she was the ultimate cookery queen. During my teens, I have cooked every possible recipe from her book!" We both agreed her recipes work like magic. Simple, doable.
Hearing Ritu laugh, chirp and giggle, I wonder about her bad temper that I have heard about and I ask her if it is really true that she is a monster in the kitchen, a tyrant who can kick sous chefs´ butts when necessary! About her impatience and her disability to suffer fools... "Gosh, I can hang my head in shame about that. I know I lose my cool, but you know what, it´s a very short fuse. I get over my anger or impatience very quickly. Besides I am seriously working upon it, very mindfully. I realise I harm myself a great deal being like that. So, soon you will find a very calm and cool Ritu!"
Her sense of humour is apparent as she continues about other aspects to her nature, referring to the cookbooks she has written, the TV shows she has done. "You know I must be a fraud," says Ritu, "I always said, "No time for cookbooks, it´s a waste of time´ and then go and launch a few. I always said. "Only fake chefs do TV shows,´ and then I go ahead and shoot for 12 consecutive days travelling 3700 kms all over Italy, cutting 24 CDs! Everybody hated me for the unforgiving schedules, but they also had great fun in my company, shooting the series in one go. I had a blast for sure!"
Ritu really does act on the spur of the moment, she doesn´t worry overly much about the consequences. She goes with the flow. Perhaps that´s why she seems so happy and full of bliss. She doesn´t get all knotted up, bottled up and pretend to be totally serious – even about being the serious chef she is. Perhaps that´s what shows in her cooking; the ease, love, passion and fun. Like she says, at the end of the day, food is about sensuality and spirituality. I see the spiritual side of Ritu. It´s not something she wears on her sleeve. But it´s there within her, something she savours. That is the source from where springs words like Cittamani, the name of her restaurant in Milan, which stands for compassion and empathy, a tantric, deep bond with the emotional and sensual aspect of things. Like food, for example, right Ritu?