Chef Gresham Fernandes

Culinary Director

Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality

An Andheri boy who plays basketball and goes to church, forty-something Gresham works assiduously at Riyaaz Amlani's many restaurants such as Salt Water Café - where he also serves as co-owner

Interviewed by ASHISH VIRMANI

Dabbling in Complex Simplicity

At Salt Water Café in Bandra, culinary director, Gresham Fernandes offers up good, simple and familiar European cuisine.

For those who remember the unforgettable seaside ambience of Salt Water Grill at Marine Drive nearly two decades ago (such as yours truly, for example) – with sand tickling one’s feet and the waves lapping a few feet away, as well as the appetising European food that was served – 17 years on, Chef Gresham Fernandes and Salt Water Café at Bandra are the link and the latest avatar of that superb millennium restaurant. When we visited Salt Water Grill around 2005, Chef Gresham happened to be a sous chef at the restaurant. Later, in 2009, owner, Riyaaz Amlani rechristened the restaurant Salt Water Café (SWC), moved it to the suburbs and SWC has been around ever since.

As has Chef Gresham. Rising through the ranks on merit, Gresham is currently culinary director and co-owner of SWC. An Andheri boy who plays basketball and goes to church, forty-something Gresham works simultaneously not just at SWC but also on many of Amlani’s other restaurants. Training staff, setting menus, organising special events, designing kitchens as well as functioning as part of the think tank for the creative aspect of several chains of restaurants, Gresham has his hands full. I ask him how much time he spends at work each day. “12 to 14 hours,” he says without hesitation and then adds matter-of-factly, “My family recently moved to Goa so I don’t have much else to do.” He also spends a considerable part of his time reading about food trends and restaurant design as well as tasting for the kitchens among his portfolio. That’s a lot of work indeed!

Gresham passed out from Bombay’s Rizvi College of Hotel Management at the turn of the millennium and worked a couple of years at The Leela. It was, as he recalls, a time of arduous training. Being part of an assembly line of chefs, working in the kitchens of a 5-star hotel involved sizeable logistics, uptight schedules and hustling. There was also ceaseless movement and a lack of sleep. “The first few years I used to come home and cry,” he confesses. But he adds that, in retrospect, the intense discipline of those years has probably made him the professional he is today.

When good friend and basketball-and-church partner, Chef Brainard introduced him to Riyaaz Amlani in 2004, Gresham came on board Salt Water Grill as a junior chef. A couple of years later he made a brief stop with Chef Vicky Ratnani at Aurus restaurant where they experimented with molecular gastronomy (“too expensive and time consuming,” quips Chef Gresham) and chefs' tables before he returned to Riyaaz with SWC. “It was freedom,” he says exultantly. “Compared to The Leela, SWC was the world of fun and music.” He was his own person at last and it was not long that he was climbing the restaurant ladder in his own unique style.

As a chef who has specialised in European cuisine Gresham serves up primarily sandwiches, salads, burgers, pasta and risotto and freshly baked breads at SWC. I ask how SWC has not just survived but more or less thrived for over a decade now, when most restaurants in the city fold up after just a couple of years. “SWC serves up good, simple food – complex simplicity as I call it. After having been around for so many years, people return to us for familiarity. They come for the dishes that they’re well acquainted with and that have remained on the menu all these years – such as the John Dory. I’m generally hesitant to replace well-loved dishes with new ones because then people complain that they’re missing them after having travelled all the way to experience them again. In the fast-changing era of 5-minute YouTube movies and reels, of audiobooks and makeovers, we’re the ones who give our customers a comfortable feeling of familiarity,” says Gresham.

Nevertheless, if there’s anything on the chef’s mind currently it’s the issue of sustainability that’s capturing the attention of the new generation worldwide – more specifically how to make his kitchens sustainable for the environment. Restaurants, he says, are not sustainable entities especially in their current context. The amounts of water and chemical cleaners they use at the moment, for example, is something that needs to be tackled. He also strongly feels the need to curb wastage of food in the kitchens and to recycle it. “Besides that, it’s also about respecting food and respecting the farmer who produces it,” he says. As his contribution to the poorly paid Indian farmer Gresham’s taken the initiative to introduce ethnic varieties of rice into the kitchens he’s handling, among other practices.

I ask the chef-cum-administrator what kind of experience he had during the COVID pandemic – those two years when the world came to a near standstill. He answers, “Professionally I have no complaints. None of our employees jumped ship, nor did we fire anyone. If anything, a beautiful unity arose among the employees from a feeling that they wanted to protect the organisation. Personally, it was a fun time for me. After 20 years of non-stop work, I got to spend quality time with my wife and daughter. I could really be a father to my little girl and we walked and cycled together. We also cooked at home using my grandmother’s recipes.” Sounds refreshing!