29 March,2026 10:04 AM IST | Mumbai | Nasrin Modak Siddiqi
Rahul Akerkar’s book moves between personal memories and the evolution of modern dining in the city. Illustrations/ Camila Geraldo
For over three decades, chef Rahul Akerkar has been one of the defining forces behind Mumbai's modern dining culture, best known for setting new benchmarks with Indigo Deli. These days, he operates at a quieter, more distilled pace, focusing on select projects and a more personal expression of food, while reflecting on a career marked by both reinvention and risk. In his book, Biting Off More Than I Can Chew (Harper Collins, Rs 1199), he turns that lens inward, charting a journey that moves from a culturally layered childhood to New York kitchens to recipes and back to a city he would go on to reshape.
The book pieces together formative influences, bold decisions, and the many setbacks along the way. What emerges is not just the story of a chef, but of someone constantly negotiating identity, ambition, and the realities of building something that lasts. The formative phase still defines how he runs a kitchen or builds a menu today.
"Saying that I'm still directly influenced by all of that might be a stretch, but it's fair to say those early experiences shaped me. Growing up in a home with mixed cultural influences - Indian food for lunch, Western food for dinner, sometimes even a mix on the same plate - that stayed with me. People often say I either "Westernised Indian" or "Indianised Western" food. I don't know which of those is true, but I'm just comfortable across palates now. My training was all on the job. I learnt to cook Western food professionally, not Indian. But my taste is still very Indian. So both come together on the plate.
The initial chapter written by his mother, Jinx Akerkar, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, laced with nostalgic anecdotes, sets the tone for the book in which Akerkar is clear-eyed about the risks he took. "If I look at the business plan for Indigo today, I'd throw it in the garbage. We spent over R5 crore in 1999 when we opened. That was unheard of for a standalone restaurant. It's still pushing the edge even today," he says.
"Whatever I learnt about business," he adds, "came from working with former model and Odissi dancer Protima Bedi's Nrityagram, a Gurukul-style dance school near Hesaraghatta on the outskirts of Bengaluru. I used to sit in on funding and review meetings, and that's where I began to understand numbers. At some point, you realise they're just numbers on a page. If you're clear about what you want to do and are driven by passion, things fall into place. Not always, but often enough."
That duality, being both chef and restaurateur, is something he has come to embrace over time. He admits that for years it felt like a tension, not knowing whether he was more of a creator or an operator, until he began to see it as a strength. When he is with chefs, he is the creator, the technician, the craftsman. On the business side, he enjoys that role just as much. It was a perspective reinforced by Michael Romano, who pointed out that most chefs don't understand business, and most businesspeople don't understand operations. Being able to straddle both, Akerkar says, allows for a far more holistic view. It has taken time, but he is finally there, likening it to being a general practitioner who sees the whole picture rather than a specialist focused on one part.
To younger chefs drawn in by the industry's sheen, Akerkar says, "The pretty plates, the people, the buzz around restaurants is just one side of it. It can be a great business when things are going well, but it can also be one of the toughest. It's relentless, often thankless, and very real. You're on your feet all the time, dealing with constant pressure. The sooner you understand that you have to work incredibly hard, probably harder than in most professions, the better. You're only as good as your last meal you cooked. It sounds like a cliché, but it's true."
And after everything he has built, lost, and rebuilt, success has distilled into something far simpler. "Honestly, if at the end of a meal someone says, âThanks, Rahul, that was a great meal,' that's it for me. That's what drives me. I love seeing people happy because of something I've created."
Rs 5 cr
was spent in 1999 to build Indigo Delicatessen.
