NISHEETH TAK OF RASAM TALKS ABOUT HIS LIFE
Wednesday 14 July 2010
Winning the Award RAI/Sunday Life Magazine Awards 2010 for Best Ethnic Restaurant in Ireland was the culmination of 20 years hard work in Ireland, the icing on the cake, for Nisheeth Tak, his wife Anna, daughters Sabina (16) and Jaya (8), and his team at Rasam Indian Restaurant in Glasthule, Co. Dublin.
Nisheeth is a charming and charismatic man who has made quite a name for himself in foodie circles but, whilst Rasam is an Indian Restaurant, it would be wrong to categorise Nisheeth purely as an Indian Restaurateur for he is an urbane highly qualified man who is at home in any area of the hospitality industry. It was he, in conjunction with Asheesh Dewan of Jaipur and Ananda restaurants, who had the passion and foresight to introduce to the dining public in Ireland to a more sophisticated lighter and modern style of Indian cooking, as seen in top establishments in India, rather than just the High Street Curry Houses to which we were accustomed.
He was born in 1961 into a middle class family, third eldest of four children, in Bikaner in Rajasthan, North West India. Bikaner is in the middle of the Thar Desert, close to the Pakistan border on one side, and Jaipur and New Delhi on the other. An area known for its mining, Nisheeth’s father was a Geologist with the Rajahstan State Mining & Mineral company. There was no television in those days, “it was a very laid back way of life, we just went to school, and came home, lay around and read a lot outside until the sun went down.” “My father’s teachers had all been English and he had in some funny way a great fascination with the English way of life and Victorian architecture and style. We were not a particularly religious family but we would have lots of philosophical and historical discussions. Listening to him gave me a desire to travel the world.” Summers were spent 900 miles away in Bombay (Mumbai) on the West Coast, where his uncle, Saawan Kumar, was a famous Film Producer Director and President of the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association, and who also received Mother Teresa’s last letter of blessing before she died. “He had no children and he would pamper us when we went to stay with lots of chocolate, of which there was none in Rajahstan. He would take us to fabulous 5 Star Hotels and I used to look at the amazing staff uniforms with lots of gold and, whilst my father wanted me to be a Doctor, I thought it would be wonderful to work and live in these hotels so Bombay proved to be quite a defining course in my life.”
When Nisheeth finished school, and a B.Comm. “Uncle Sawaan”, off filming in Mauritius, urged Nisheeth’s mother to send him to house sit and do a Hotel Management Course at the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition in Mumbai. After this Nisheeth then went as a Management Trainee to Hotel Clarks Amer in Jaipur, then to the Ramada Plaza Palm Grove, a super 5 Star Hotel on Juhu beach in Bombay. His next move was to the Ambassador Hotel in the financial centre of Bombay where he was soon appointed Restaurant Manager. He was moving up the ladder rapidly.
The Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel in Mumbai was the ultimate work place. One of the most famous hotels in the world, it has seen celebrities, royalty and Heads of State, from Jacqueline Kennedy, to Hilary Clinton, the Prince of Wales and Mick Jagger. In 1986 Nisheeth was ‘poached’ for the hotel’s Rendezvous French Restaurant, later transferring as Restaurant Manager to their Tanjore Indian Specialty restaurant Many of the Tanjore’s staff went on to open prestigious Indian restaurants around the world. “It was a great training ground to learn about top international standards and it was here I also met Camellia Panjabi, then Marketing Director of the Taj Group Hotels, who now owns the famous Chutney Mary, Amaya and Masala Zone restaurants in London. “She was very widely travelled, even in those days, and very keen to introduce regional variety of Indian cuisine. We would often hold food festivals, inviting expert chefs from various regions to showcase their flavours.” It was the Taj Mumbai that was targeted tragically by terrorists in 2008, with one of Nisheeth’s great friends, Executive Chef Vijay Banja, being shot dead
After four years a London based restaurateur from London said he was opening a chain of top restaurants in Europe - London, Paris, Dublin, and invited him to come and join him. “I just lapped it up and thought why not. I landed in Dublin on a cold afternoon in March 1990.” However, all was not as it had been portrayed. “It was an unexpected cultural shock and my first experience of a family run place. The owner’s brother was in the chef with zero cooking experience, and another brother and brother-in law, with no catering experience, were front of house. And then there was me!” Accommodation was provided but it was almost impossible to get paid, so for the first three months he was a virtual slave! “I did my very best, my plan then was to somehow work for a year, and then go to Australia where two of my colleagues had gone. They now have well known restaurants in Sydney – Qmin and Zaffraan.”
However, fate took a hand, and his Australian plans took a back seat as he had met and fallen in love with Anna, who was working in the hospitality business. In March 1992, they went to India, which Anna liked very much, and where they had a traditional Indian wedding. Anna suggested they give Dublin one last try and if things didn’t work out they would go abroad. They returned to Dublin to the Royal Tandoori Restaurant beside the Gaiety Theatre and had a comfortable lifestyle. From there Nisheeth moved to the popular Saagar Restaurant in Harcourt Street, and thence moved to Poppadom in Rathgar. He then met businessman Asheesh Dewan, which Nisheeth says was “a turning point in both their lives, as they both wanted to open a modern restaurant that had nothing to do with the traditional Indian Curry House”. They brought properly trained chefs from 5 Star hotels in India. Asheesh had just opened a restaurant called Zaffraan in George’s Street but Nisheeth came on board and they rebranded it to Jaipur Restaurant, an instant success, and the first of a number of excellent Jaipur restaurants for Asheesh Dewan. Also involved in the setting up of Vermillion in Terenure, Nisheeth finally opened Rasam in August 2003 in partnership with businessman Rangan Arulchelvan, of the Russell Court Hotel and hip Krystle Nightclub. Rasam proved a runaway success and Nisheeth praises his very highly trained professional staff, Chef Sanjay Vishwakarma and Prateek Vikram who both trained in the prestigious Oberoi Hotels in India, and were with him from the start.
By 2002 Nisheeth and Anna had two daughters Sabina and Jaya and when the girls were 7 and 4 months old Anna developed breast cancer, which he says “changed our whole perspective on life and brought us much closer together. We would sit in our back garden and hold hands, have long conversations, and give each other a few extra hugs.” Happily, having taken the cancer drug Tamoxafin for five years, Anna is now fully clear.
Reflecting on the Celtic Tiger period Nisheeth “wishes it were possible to hold a proper conversation with the authorities who decide on work permits – we would have much higher standards in ethnic restaurants.” “Family run restaurants”, such as that he initially came to work in “made it much harder for people like myself and Asheesh Dewan to change the stereotype image of Indian Restaurants.” He feels somewhat disappointed that he “could not play a meaningful role in society because of the limits imposed upon our kind of ethnic restaurants.” To bring in a properly trained chef from India can only be done if they cannot find anyone suitable in the EU. Nisheeth feels that when a foreign Doctor takes up a job here he has to go through the Medical Council and it would be good if foreign chefs too had to go through some kind of Professional Council. “As an employer our hands are tied behind our backs, whereas a chef that we bring in on a work permit, after a very long drawn out process, can just use us as a stepping stone, give us a week’s notice and go and join a Hotel – not cooking ethnic food at all.” Another idea would be to introduce Indian cookery classes by qualified Indian Chefs in catering colleges, which would reduce the need to bring in chefs from India.
Government he feels “should look at the Ethnic Restaurant sector more as a potential growth area. With some fine tuning and stricter standards, this can only generate more wealth. China and India have now overtaken, for the first time ever, the EU in the Millionaire’s league. The Indian Film Industry produces more movies than Hollywood. All of this can be great news for our economy but we do not attract this rich segment.”
Whilst Nisheeth’s parents may not have been particularly religious they instilled in him a sense of sharing and caring and they have always taken part in volunteer work. Nisheeth worked with Care Local an organization dedicated to befriending and helping elderly people www.carelocal.com as a volunteer and Director for nearly seven years. He is very fond of books, Bertrand Russell, Anthony Grayling, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Dawkins, and Henry David Thoreau whose essay on Civil Disobedience inspired Ghandi. He finds Thoreau’s two famous quotes a great inspiration – “It is better to sit on a pumpkin by yourself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion” and the other being “you are happy in proportion to things you can live without.”
A proponent of deep breathing and yoga, Nisheeth points out the health benefits of Indian food, which are based on Ayurvedic principles made to support the body nutritionally and spiritually with six basic tastes – sweet, sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent. Rather than being based on calories and fat grams, it looks at food’s properties and its assimilation in the body. Indian spices have great health benefits – Turmeric is a natural antiseptic, antibacterial, anti inflammatory and liver detoxifier. Colour your rice with it, or heat a little in milk and drink. I often throw it on the pan with chili oil and fry eggs in it!! Fenugreek seeds help ease joint pains and lower blood sugar levels. Black salt lowers blood pressure and inflammation. Cloves have antibacterial, anti viral, anti fungal and anti septic properties. it is also naturally anesthetic due to Eugenol oil.
Firmly rooted in Irish society, Nisheeth returns to Rajasthan to visit his parents and family once a year. His eldest sister is now a vet and one brother is a Film Distributor whilst the other is in the cement business.
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON JULY 11, 2010.
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