Five Minutes With: Former Gymkhana Chef Sid Ahuja Brings Classic North Indian Dishes To Dine Out

Sid Ahuja spent almost a decade as chef and director of London’s two-Michelin-starred Gymkhana, a northern Indian restaurant where everyone from Priyanka Chopra to Taylor Swift has dined. 

But in February, he left the business and moved to Australia. “London has a busy lifestyle and [is] a busy city altogether,” he says. “My daughter was starting school, and I wanted her to start school in a calm and in a better environment. And, of course, nothing could be better than Brisbane.”

Ahuja is working on opening his own restaurant in the River City, but for now, he’s coming to Melbourne as part of Broadsheet’s winter food festival Dine Out. The chef is working with Mischa Tropp on a special series of dishes at Tropp’s grand Indian restaurant Kolkata Cricket Club. Book in from Wednesday July 22 to Sunday July 26 to order from Ahuja’s six-dish à la carte menu, which will be served alongside Kolkata Cricket Club’s classic menu.

We caught up with Ahuja to learn more about what he has planned for Dine Out.

How did you and Mischa work together and decide on the dishes you’ll be serving?

We kind of ran through the menu that he already has, and then we decided to do up six special dishes. So that covers a few appetisers, a few mains and a few sides. It’s complementing his menu. His menu still runs for the festival, plus we have these six extra dishes. And we kind of go together hand in hand.

What dishes are you particularly excited about?

Kolkata Cricket Club is more focused on Bengali and regional Bengali cuisine, and I am bringing in a lot of north Indian flair into the whole dining experience. I am born and brought up in Delhi, so, obviously, my background is far more north Indian. We are presenting aloo chaat, which is a very famous north Indian street food. It’s crispy potatoes dressed with tamarind and chaat masala and other bits, and then dressed with sweet yoghurt, topped with some more tamarind chutney and some gram flour vermicelli or sev. So it’s quite a blend of sweet, sour, salty, crispy – lots of textures, lots of things going on in there.

[It’s] very classic. I vouch for everything which is very authentic. My culinary philosophy is to preserve and re-create the classics and the original versions.

Has it been challenging to adapt to using Australian ingredients? 

Honestly, I feel Australian ingredients are far superior to what you get back in the UK. And they are very similar to what Indian ingredients look like. The spiciness of the green chillies is very common. The curry leaves. Some of the very specifically Indian ingredients that are grown in Australia are literally like replicas of what you get back home in India.

Mischa was very excited about working with you on the tandoor dishes. Can you tell us about the tandoor-cooked chicken?

We’re doing Lahori karahi chicken. It’s a very classic version of the street food from the city of Lahore. It’s tandoor-cooked chicken, which is stir-fried in a sauce made with onion and tomatoes, and then that’s further dressed with more pickled onions and some chillies. It’s a good sweet spicy dish. It’s not your regular takeaway, it’s one of those really authentic versions that is done back in Lahore, because obviously Lahore was part of India until the time Partition [of India and Pakistan] happened in ’47. We still share a similar food style. 

Are these dishes that you made in the past at Gymkhana? 

Some of the dishes still are there on the Gymkhana menu. If you look at the methi mutter malai paneer [on the Dine Out menu] that’s a very classic Delhi dish. It’s rich gravy made with onion and khoya – khoya is like a dehydrated milk which is added to the sauce – and then peas and fresh fenugreek are added to the sauce and made into a curry with cottage cheese, which is paneer. So that’s again a very authentic Delhi dish, very wintry Delhi dish that we have in India.

Do you have a signature dish?

My signature dishes are the biryanis and the butter chicken, but obviously we are not doing a butter chicken because Mischa already has a butter chicken on his menu. 

The biryani we’re doing is a take on the version we did back in London. We used to do it with venison, because venison was reared in the Scottish Highlands. But here the quality of meat is not as good as what it was in Scotland, so we’ve kind of adapted it to use Meredith goat. 

It’s a Hyderabadi style of cooking. It’s boldly spiced and fragrant.  The meat is cooked with a lot of spices and chillies and garam masala, and then it’s layered with fragrant saffron and rice. Then it’s sealed into a pot with puff pastry, and then baked in the oven. So the rice and the meat kind of combine together, and it’s like a slow-cooked marriage of both the flavours.

Are you excited to be cooking these dishes again?

Yes, I’m really looking forward to getting back in my whites and getting back into the kitchen. Because right now I’m in R&D kind of mode. So I’m collating stuff, collating suppliers, getting ingredients. So I’m happy to get back into action. Down and dirty, you know?