The Sweet Perfectionist

He loves all things sweet and buttery. Executive Chef, Taj Lands End, Rohit Sangwan, has over 16 years of experience in pâtisserie, bakery and banquets and is a big name in the hotel industry. And he’s loved by all who know him    

Interviewed by Maithili Chakravarthy

Chef Rohit Sangwan came from a family of doctors, and the idea of him being an engineer was floated around. However, he enjoyed cooking. Right from boarding school itself – he went to Mayo College in Ajmer before his Hotel Management course. At Mayo, while the rest of the kids would feast on milk and buns, Rohit would add onions to the buns and thus began Bun do Pyaaza. He was the person who would make it for everyone, and it all started there.

Post Mayo, Rohit went to IHM Pusa in New Delhi, after which he did a traineeship. To better his skills, he went on to the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts in Paris, where he learnt French hot cooking. What followed was the Lenôtre School of Culinary Arts where he learnt about pastries. When he started working full-time, the chef would take days off from work to master his skills by enrolling for courses in schools such as the Macaron Pastry Training Centre in Bangkok.

In the initial days of studying and training, Chef thought about being a bartender, but that idea quickly left him and he decided to be a chef. He decided to start off with pastries. “After my training, during the placement interviews, there was a Chef Arvind Saraswat who asked me why I wanted to get into pastries, there’s hardly anyone who wants to go into it. That’s because I loved eating cakes and pastries and I told the amused interviewer that.”

Thus began his journey as a pastry chef – Rohit’s foray into the world of cooking. “Every chef has to start with some cuisine, either Indian or European or Chinese, and then you go on to learning other cuisines. I started with pastries. My first job was at Taj, New Delhi, after which I came to Bombay to work at TajLands End. I guess I loved pastries because I hailed from a dairy state, Haryana, and I think the butter and cream I was surrounded by did the trick for me.”

Rohit’s parents were initially embarrassed about their son wanting to be a chef. Till about 10 years of his career, his parents used to send letters to him, calling him a manager, not chef, with the hotel address. His father kept enquiring of him if he would get the chance to be an F&B manager sometime. Ultimately, the family came around to believing the hotel industry was not a bad place to be in.

When Chef Rohit got the job at Taj Lands End, he began to feel as if he arrived. It was the Regent Hotel before, and was being taken over by the Taj Group. The chef at the new Taj Lands End called him asking if he would like to be the first pastry chef of the hotel. “That’s when I realised I’ve become a big guy now. So I came from Delhi to Mumbai for the job…” And today he’s the executive chef. Been a long time!

Chef Rohit believes cooking is ingredient-driven, “I’ve worked with some Michelin-starred chefs, for example, Charlie Palmer and Thomas Keller, which is when I realised that ingredients play the most important part in any cooking. Chef Thomas had said that cooking is ingredients plus execution. So if the ingredients are right, one can learn how to execute well, and that’s cooking.”

Pointing to the cookies he laid out for us, he explained how they can just melt in your mouth, because the flour is not kneaded much. “I don’t mess around with the flour much because if you work on it too much, gluten gets formed and that will give it a bite. Pastry has taught me a lot about ingredients, which I’ve carried on to the rest of my work.”

Chef Rohit got his killer instinct to excel in whatever he did from the games he played in school and college. He played for his state and at the national level in various games, one of which was baskteball. He played five times at the national level. That instilled in him the idea that he should be the best at whatever he does in life, because there would be no other way to survive. Even when he started off as a chef de partie, when salaries were not great, he decided to study at the best institutes, learn from the best people, to excel at his craft. What does he enjoy the most about his work? Bringing a smile to people’s faces! And when people compare his food to where they tasted the food originally, that’s a win for him. He smiles and says it’s the biggest compliment he gets.

Which are his top recipes, we ask him next. More than French pastries, he likes Austrian and German confections. He tells us that if someone wanted to start a cake shop he would tell them to go to Austria and learn the ropes. Learn how to make a good apple strudel, which can’t be found in Bombay. Learn how to make strudel not with puff pastry but with proper strudel dough. He tells us he finds the tortes and cakes very beautiful, and that they use simple ingredients, which people have forgotten about. He thinks it’s probably because the countries from where they come have not marketed them well enough, like the French have marketed their desserts. “Maybe those pastries are too rustic, but they are also very tasty,” says Chef Rohit. 

On the savoury side, he loves Indian, Italian, Japanese and Mexican. He also loves Thai food, and cuisines from Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore.

What is the key to success in his line of work? Great organisation. The chef adds that without organisation, the life of an executive chef becomes difficult, and that one has to foresee things. Being a pastry chef helped his organisational skills, because the pastry kitchen is more systematic than the hot kitchen. He also ensures he does a random tasting of food at his hotel, and tells his juniors when improvement is needed.

Chef Rohit concludes, “We also change the menu every three months. We do an exercise called menu engineering. That is all about which dishes are moving, which are not. Guests’ feedback is of utmost importance to us. They are paying for the food, after all.”