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| Chef Vineet Bhatia |
“I had never trekked
before in my life”, says Chef Vineet Bhatia. Yet, this Michelin starred chef
climbed up till the Everest Base Camp where he and his team set up the most
memorable dining experience at 17,600 feet! The 3-day pop-up was held from 3rd-5th
June, 2018. On the first two days the team fed fellow trekkers. The third day
saw a lavish meal laid out for diners who had specially flown in for the event.
Since it was a charity event, the meal itself was priced at USD 1500 per
person, while the logistics of reaching there constituted an additional cost.
Chef Vineet confesses
that the original idea came from an Australian chef who wanted to set a world
record of hosting the highest pop-up restaurant at the Everest Base Camp (EBC).
Since he couldn’t get the requisite funding (it requires USD 15,000 to apply
for a world record plus many more expenses involved) he approached Chef Vineet
Bhatia for the same. Being an internationally recognized chef, Chef Vineet
started getting all the media attention for this project. The Australian chef
got miffed and pulled out of the project. It was then that the idea of cooking
for charity, instead of a world record, took shape.
The Right Cause
While we closely
follow this jetsetting chef’s journey all over the world through his active
social media accounts it is evident that he spends a chunk of his time cooking
for charity events. One of the charities that he supports ardently is the Heart
For India Foundation that works actively in Chennai, to help provide education
to underprivileged children from 3 to 18 years and vocational training diplomas
and job recruitments for young women. Although he himself spent a significant
amount of money on this trek, the entire proceeds have gone to Heart for India
Foundation. The earnings from the documentary that was filmed during the entire
trek and pop-up will also follow suit.
The Training and Actual Trek
“Although I have
travelled extensively, I had never trekked in my life,” says Chef Vineet. Eight
weeks prior to the trek he started working on increasing his stamina and doing
cardio-training for almost two hours every day. “I walked on the highest
incline on the treadmill, with a 15kg backpack,” he says. This was important
because after landing at Lukla, the gateway to Mount Everest, the 12-day trek
began. While they were initially hiking 10km a day, as the incline increased
and oxygen decreased, there were times when they covered a stretch of mere 400m
in four and a half hours! “The extreme conditions really tire you out. Imagine,
even at temperatures as low as -8/-9 degrees Celsius, we were sweating,” shares
Chef Vineet. But he feels extremely lucky that he and his team could achieve
the goal and complete the task without falling sick. “Discipline was key,” he
states, which meant getting adequate sleep and abstaining from alcohol, smoking
and carbonated drinks throughout the trek.
The Right Team
“It was very important
to have people who got along well. Plus, I needed experienced chefs for the
actual cooking,” says Chef Vineet. The core team comprised of six people along
with two sherpas. The first to come on board was Chef Vineet’s son, 19 year old
Varaul. Then there was Chef Tej Bahadur Thapa, chef de cuisine, Rasoi by
Vineet, Gulf Hotel Bahrain, Chef Irshad Irshad Qureshi from Grosvenor House
Dubai who have both worked for almost 15 years with Chef Vineet, who was thus
familiar with their “steely determination”. And finally, there were two
camerapersons from Delhi filming the entire experience.
The Menu and Actual Cooking
At an altitude where
trekkers survive mostly on packaged foods or some very basic cooked food, this
special pop-up ‘restaurant’ served some mouth-watering fare. The multi-course
menu included vegetable momos, dal shorba spiced with locally procured wild
juniper berries and jimbu (an herb belonging to the onion family, used
extensively in some regions of Nepal), grilled chicken, yak butter rice,
stir-fried beans with jeera, potatoes, fish masala (again, a local river fish),
chicken masala and saffron sooji halwa with gold leaf, masala tea and
chocolate.
The Actual Cooking
All this was dished
out from just a pressure cooker, kadhai, handi and a pan and everything had to
be cooked on a gas stove since charcoal fire is not allowed in this region. Hence
the team had to think out of the box and devised various hacks to ensure that
they could serve a fine meal to fellow trekkers as well as the diners who were
flying in for this once-in-a-lifetime experience. “Even Gul Bahadur Sherpa gave
some valuable tips since he had been a chef for summiteers multiple times.” The
chicken was cut into thin slices, as were the potatoes; ginger and garlic were
chopped extremely fine so that flavour profiles of the dishes could be
maintained while cooking time could be reduced; and so on.
The Most Memorable Moment
On hindsight, Chef
Vineet feels that this entire experience has left an inimitable lesson in
humility. “Having seen the extreme hardships of the land, I appreciate
everything in life even more,” he shares. Needless to say, despite all the
hardships, the natural beauty that they were surrounded with was absolutely
“stunning”. The most memorable moment for Chef Vineet was when he, along with
two of his teammates, trekked up to Kala Patthar. “We started the three and a
half hour trek to Kala Patthar at 2 am catch the sunrise,” he reminisces. “I
remember sitting there with a cup of chai and a peanut cookie that we had
bought from Namche Bazaar; there was complete silence, with not even a bird in
the sky, surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the world, and of course,
the beautiful Mount Everest. All that I could feel was ‘how small I am ’, all
my achievements just shrank away, leaving this most amazing moment etched in my
mind forever.”
A version of this article first appeared in The New Indian Express, Indulge - Coimbatore on July 20, 2018.
