Plate tectonics: A Wknd interview with restaurateur Niyati Rao

Ekaa, just 14 months old, has made it onto the extended list of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. The dream is to create new Indian classics, says the 28-year-old.

Being dyslexic meant that chef Niyati Rao had some very hard days in school. “I wasn’t good at core subjects such as math and science. I was bullied a lot,” she says.

‘Decades ago, someone came up with the idea of frying little puris and filling them up with spicy water. That’s how we got pani puri. I don’t want to give the world a new version of pani puri but maybe create something that a century from now could be perceived in the same way,’ says Rao. (HT Archives)

The bright spots in her day were the quiet times in the family kitchen, watching her mother and grandmother cook. She realised early on, she says, that food can make people happy. It was an ability that felt like a superpower, “and I wanted that superpower.”

Fast-forward a few years and, at 28, Rao is co-founder and head chef at Ekaa (Hindi for unique or peerless). It’s a cosy cuisine-agnostic fine-dining restaurant in her home city, Mumbai, that offers ingredient-first Indian fine-dining (think khichdi with trout roe and kombucha gel; or a Japanese-inspired grilled Bombay duck). Unusually, it encourages diners to ditch the cutlery and use their hands.

Earlier this month, Ekaa came in at #93 on the extended list of Asia’s 50 Best restaurants (compiled by 50 Best, an initiative of the media house William Reed). Also on the extended list are Delhi’s Bukhara at #52, Mumbai’s Americano at #66 and The Table, also in Mumbai, at #78. Meanwhile, Masque (Mumbai), Indian Accent (Delhi) and Avartana (ITC Grand Chola in Chennai) are in the top 50, at #16, #19 and #30 respectively.

Rao says she dreamed of being on this list as a teenager, even before she enrolled at the Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) in Mumbai. “We are a very young team here… this means we’re doing something right,” she adds.

The restaurant, just 14 months old, was born in the lockdown, co-founded by Rao and former colleague Sagar Neve, 29. While setting up and nurturing it, the two also fell in love and, in January, married. At their establishment, the dream is to create flavours and combinations that are new, distinctly Indian, and will be so delicious and inviting that they will live forever.

While co-founding and nurturing Ekaa, Rao and Sagar Neve fell in love and, in January, married.

“Decades ago, someone came up with the idea of frying little puris and filling them up with spicy water. That’s how we got pani puri. I don’t want to give the world a new version of pani puri but maybe create something that a century from now could be perceived in the same way,” Rao says.

One of these is Bombay Duck, Gor-Keri, Fish Floss, Cucumber, a take on a Japanese delicacy called hitsumabushi.

“That dish is eel grilled with a soy-based sauce. We don’t get the quality of eel here that this dish requires so we use bombil or Bombay duck, which has the loveliest texture,” Rao says. “The fish is grilled over charcoal with a sauce whose base is Gor Keri, a sweet, spicy mango pickle made in Gujarat. This is topped with mackerel fish floss and served on a bed of sticky rice from the north-east that’s cooked with ginger. On the side, there’s spicy coriander pickled cucumbers and mushroom broth.”

On the menu: Liver pâte, cilantro and soy served on a bed of seaweed.

Why a fine-dining approach? Rao credits her love for precision and high standards to her first stint in the restaurant business, at the exclusive Zodiac Grill at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. “I was a 20-year-old management trainee who got a chance to play with ingredients such as foie gras.” Next came a stint with the legendary Japanese restaurant Wasabi by Morimoto, also at the Taj. “At Wasabi, I understood that the world of cuisine is large but the world of ingredients is infinite. And I learnt how the quality of an ingredient can make a difference. I don’t think anyone gets better or fresher ingredients [in the city] than Morimoto.”

She interned briefly at Noma in Denmark, which has been named best restaurant in the world multiple times, but had to rush back because of the pandemic. “It was still very educational,” she says. “I saw the chefs there work magic with regular ingredients such as pumpkin. They respect their ingredients and that’s why the world respects them.”

The menu that Rao and her team have created is a reflection of what she learnt at these establishments, and the love and care she saw her mother Hetal Rao, a pharmacist, and her paternal grandmother Suhasini Desai, a homemaker, put into everything they cooked, she says. “My mother makes a prawn and bamboo curry. She travels to Dahanu, almost three hours out of the city, to buy fresh bamboo shoot in the monsoon. She serves this with Krishna kamod rice, sol kadhi and fish fry,” Rao says.

Butterhead lettuce with grana, silken tofu and zucchini, a sesame-based dressing and a Japanese Negi dressing.

She also mentions her family’s annual crab curry, made using a recipe passed down through generations. And a trip to Japan with her late father that included a visit to the Tsukiji fish market. “My love for food definitely comes from my parents. When we travelled as a family, we were encouraged to try everything. When you do that, you start respecting and understanding other cultures. That’s when boundaries start to fade away,” Rao says.

If Ekaa’s menu is unusual, so is its kitchen. “Guests can walk in and talk to us. During the FIFA World Cup final last year, we had a guest who wanted to be updated about the score because we had the match playing on one of our phones.”

It’s been a long journey from her first-ever dish, Rao adds, laughing: a bowl of Parle-G soaked in milk, that she presented to her father as a cake.