Indian chef-restaurateur Vineet Bhatia on his tasting-menu-only VBL venture

You said you were leaving Chelsea and now you’re back. What happened?​

The lease ran out earlier this year and the landlord was asking too much to renew it. My wife Rashida and I announced that we were closing but soon after that the landlord offered us a better deal. We could have done a minor refurb and reopened as Rasoi but we shut for two and a half months and refitted the entire restaurant. We also changed the name.

Why the change?​

When we opened Rasoi 12 years ago we redefined Indian food in this country and set the benchmark for modern Indian fine dining. A lot of other places have since copied our approach, most notably our lighter way of cooking and modern plating style. With VBL (Vineet Bhatia London) we have moved Indian fine dining on again. It’s several notches higher than Rasoi. We’ve put all our cash back into the business and our necks on the line, but we think it will work out. I now have 10 restaurants overseas but this is the flagship.

How exactly have you moved Indian food on with VBL?​

Nobody is doing Indian food at this level. The trend now is more mid-market. A lot of our competitors are making their food less involved and more rustic, we’re doing the opposite. With that said, the flavour is still Indian to the core. Putting the prices up a bit will allow us to have more staff and use even better ingredients. There has been and there will continue to be more development and the menu will change more regularly — once every two months.

And you’ve ditched À la carte...​

Yes; 80 per cent of our guests at Rasoi used to have the tasting menu anyway. But focusing on a relatively small number of dishes will allow us to change the way we run the kitchen and dramatically improve the quality of the food. 

You shut for a few months, have you retained your staff?​

We lost 50 per cent of our staff, mostly front of house. We announced we were closing last year and a lot of people moved on. The core team is the same though, including my long-term head chef Manmeet Singh Bali.

Tell us about the menu…​

It’s 15 or so small plates. There are six one-bite items based on street food dishes, followed by seven larger portions. There are virtually no carbs and we don’t do side orders of rice or naan. In fact at the moment we don’t even serve a dish that could be described as a curry.

Have you retained any dishes from Rasoi?​

Just a couple – our take on smoked salmon and also the chocolate samosa – but the way we serve them has been tweaked. 

Tell us about your background​

I was born in Mumbai. I originally wanted to be a pilot but I was too short. I signed up to hotel school because I wanted to be a barman but it turned out I wasn’t tall enough for that either. That’s how I ended up in the kitchen. I didn’t learn to cook from my grandma or anything like that. I learnt in the great hotel kitchens of India.

When did you arrive in the UK?​

In 1993. I got a job as head chef of The Star of India in Brompton Road. I was the only Indian in the restaurant, it was run by people from Bangladesh and served Brick Lane-style curry house food. I changed everything despite a huge amount of resistance from customers, not to mention the staff. It was a very difficult time but it got easier when the restaurant received rave reviews from the likes of Fay Maschler, AA Gill and Jonathan Meades. By the time I left it was the most successful Indian restaurant in London.

Then you opened Zaika with Claudio Pulze… ​

Yes. I was introduced to him by Gordon Ramsay and I signed up for the restaurant the same day they had the high-profile falling out at Aubergine. It opened in 1999 and in 2001 Zaika won a Michelin star, the first Indian restaurant ever to do so. In 2004, I left to open Rasoi with Rashida, which also won a star soon after opening.

You lost that star last year. was that a blow? ​

We didn’t lose it. We’d announced we were shutting down in March so Michelin didn’t put us into the 2016 guide. Cooking for the guides has never been the point anyway. Michelin and all the other awards don’t feed my family. Sure they’re important, but they don’t pay the bills.

What does the opening of VBL mean for your 10 international restaurants?​

They’re going well. I’ll still spend around 150 days a year out of the country but they’ll be short trips to allow me to have a regular presence in Chelsea.