Everybody needs a creative gap year. Even Manish Mehrotra

“The first question anyone asks me these days is, ‘What are you doing?’”

Indeed, everyone wants to know what chef Manish Mehrotra is up to. They want to know what he’s planning for his next restaurant. They want to know who’s working with him. They want to know where he’s going to open it. 

Mehrotra shared some of his plans with us a few weeks ago. “I ordered gardening tools from Amazon. I’m telling the maali to get me saplings of marigold. Until now, I’d never even seen the plants upstairs on my terrace.”

Earlier this year, at the end of July, the multi-hyphenate stepped down as culinary director of Indian Accent in Delhi, New York City, and Mumbai, and Comorin in Gurgaon. We won’t get into his many, many groundbreaking achievements and accolades here; there are already scores of articles and features about those. Instead, we want to pay attention to what the chef has been busy with in his creative gap year. (Or as he notes, it will be only half a year; he has plans to put his toque back on in early 2025.) 

Mehrotra has taken this time to do all the things he wanted to but couldn’t these past 20+ years. Instead of training teams, he’s investing in relationships with family and friends. Instead of putting in hours in a hot kitchen, he’s working on himself, focussing on his health, and setting up a routine that meets him where he is today. Instead of travelling internationally for events, research, and other work, he’s going back to home base—his Bihar, his Patna, with the cousins who shared his childhood. 

A few weeks ago in November, he posted a time-lapse story on Instagram in which he’s getting turbaned by a safa-wala. In the video, Mehrotra is seated on a folding chair on a sunny lawn, while wedding guests mill around in the background. He’s wearing a watermelon red kurta and sunglasses. The turbaneer spirals around him, pleating, folding and swirling a printed pink length of cloth around the chef’s crown. “I always wanted to do this...Finally,” reads Mehrotra’s caption. The next story has him sitting under the vast tree canopy, the winter sun streaming through its flaxen leaves and branches. Caption: “Fursat”.

This laid-back life seemed unthinkable earlier this year. “I would have never imagined I could have attended family weddings,” he says. “I want to...I would love to! There are so many family members I have not met for years. I went to my cousin sister’s grandson’s first birthday. Afterwards, I called my daughter and told her that I could not have imagined that I would be doing this. I have never got a chance to go to these kinds of events and functions.”

For him, it’s been a quarter of a century of hot and busy kitchens, demanding guests, big work events, many flights, staff training, menu development, firefighting, and thousands of relentless lunch and dinner services, especially and always on the days and nights that the rest of the world takes time off to relax, hang out, celebrate. As the chef of one of India’s most acclaimed restaurants, as a leader in an industry that works while everyone else chills, and as the pioneer of wildly playful modern Indian cuisine, Mehrotra has not had a moment to pause. “I’m trying not to think about anything at this point,” he says. “I want to switch off and think about nothing. I want to eat at different places, to do a little bit of cooking at home, just lay low and do nothing. And pay a little attention to routine and health.” 

He’s using the time to both connect and to jettison. “You can’t throw everything out, [but] you can’t keep everything,” he says. There’s more than two decades of career history in research, cookbooks, awards and accolades. “I had more books in my office than at home, so I got cupboards made. It’s 24 years of pending spring cleaning.” But before he did any of this, his first priority was to spend time with his daughter Adah, to travel to south India and Japan with her, before dropping her off at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, where she will be studying for the next two years. It’s been a time of big transitions clearly. He timed his break to spend time with his daughter before she left, and now he’s on a sabbatical with all his time to himself. 

He also used the time to plan another trip—one that was, in many ways a homecoming, a journey to where it all began. “I am from Bihar, but I have never seen Bihar. I have no relatives there, they are all in Lucknow. I’m going to take a road trip through my state with my cousins. Bihar is a very long held-dream. I want to see it with my own eyes,” he said a few weeks ago, and in the last week of November, he finally took that trip, eating through not only the state’s street food and sweets, but also the “best chicken mirchi kabab” at Takshila in Hotel Chanakya. “Bachpan se aa rahe hain iss restaurant mein,” he says in a video he shared. 

Within the restaurant industry, too, people have taken note that the chef is finally taking time off, and many pending invitations are being revived. Chefs want him to come to their restaurants and parties. Awards’ night organisers want him on juries, at ceremonies and for big nights. While Mehrotra has attended some and participated in a few, he’s kept his time off sacrosanct for the most part, focussing on himself and his family. 

He also dreams of writing a cookbook, or many. “In 15 years at Indian Accent, I have created so many menus and dishes,” he says. “I want to put it all into writing. I have so many recipes from which I can easily create a book. I could do my interpretation of different types of chaat from all over. I want to do a book on the cuisine of Bihar. I can do a book on 56 different types of raita, because we have served 56 types at Indian Accent over the years...raitas with smoked eggplant, smoked mustard and charred corn, bhujia, and wasabi with cucumber. I was the first one to do anaar-avocado raita in 2009. Now you see it on menus at wedding banquets.”

Also sidling in are the rumours he hears about himself. “People have said the strangest things [during this time]. They have said that I am opening a chain of chaat restaurants. Someone also told me they’ve heard that ‘Manish is struggling. He is not getting any work. People can’t afford him.’”

This much is certain: chef Manish Mehrotra is not retiring. And here is what’s really on his mind: many ideas, some proposals, and some conflicting thoughts and questions. “Do I have to do the same thing I’ve done so far? Do I have to please the industry? Or do I have to make a restaurant to please people, to make money? Do I have to look for awards? Do I have to start running the race for recognition again? Suddenly so many people are giving me advice. Some people say, why don’t you open a restaurant like Prateek’s? Some people are saying don’t do that. The expectations are so high right now, the pressure is building up. But what if I open a restaurant serving chhole bhatura, the best chhole bhatura in Delhi?”

Until he has clear answers, or until early 2025, he’s going to keep doing what he’s doing. “Home improvement and gardening—it’s fun!,” he says, just before posting this photo of parijat flowers from his garden. 

“I’m now meeting so many family members and friends after such a long time,” he says. “I am so happy. I should have done it consistently before. They all used to think I am a celebrity chef and all that. Now, I am a member of the family again.”