Gaggan 1.0

I’m not usually a fan of 3-star Michelin restaurants. Too fussy, too many courses. I like picking what I want to eat from a menu. Maybe I’m too fussy, but that’s kinda the point of going out to eat, hey?

But when I think back on the greatest meals I’ve ever had, a 3-star sometimes pops into my head. Like the French Laundry, Noma, or Arzak. (Some I didn’t like, but I won’t mention them since everybody’s tastes are different.)

Which brings me to Gaggan.

Born in Kolkata, India, Gaggan Anand started his career as a drummer in a rock band. (That may explain his manic energy. Why else would he be pounding the stainless-steel prep table in the kitchen while his crew scurries around plating courses?

Eventually, he turned to food. After getting a degree in a catering college, he tried catering and later moved to Bangkok to work in a contemporary Indian restaurant called Red.

Later, he interned at the famous elBulli in Roses, Spain, on Ferran Adrià’s research team.

In 2010, he opened Gaggan in Bangkok, which kept getting named on The World's 50 Best Restaurants list. In 2015, 2016, and 2017, Gaggan was named both the best restaurant in Thailand and 4th in the world by Restaurant magazine’s “Asia's 50 Best Restaurants” list.

Somehow, we copped a reservation in January 2019.

We were lucky because in July, after a dispute with his partners, he resigned, (his staff bolted too). Ironically, a few days later, Gaggan was ranked No. 4 at the World’s Best gala. Seriously, what a mess. But we were a few months ahead of that fallout.

At the time, we didn’t know anything about this chef or the accolades. Looking at the website, I couldn’t find a menu, a price, or any details about the place, so we canceled the reservation.

When we told a friend (a Vietnamese chef) we canceled, he told us we were out of our minds, we had to go. So, we crawled back to the reservation site and pretended we had made a mistake.

Thus, on one sunny and sticky afternoon, we arrived at a lovely white mansion on a back street in Bangkok to have lunch.

It was one of those graceful rooms (multi rooms actually) that made me feel that I was not at a stuffy Michelin but at someone’s home (a grand one but still) for a casual meal with friends.

Picture this: a starched white linen tablecloth, simple white china, elegant silverware, and in the center of the plate sat a sheet of heavy card stock with about 25 emojis printed in color. Not that I expected a traditional menu.

The Menu

Then it started. Dish after dish came out, served to all the guests at once. Delicate little bites. Half the fun was trying to decipher the emoji that was supposed to represent the dish.

At one point in the service, we had no silverware and the waiter set down a dinner plate with a drawing of a cheeseburger (sort of) made from sauces. At the top, it said, “Lick me up!”

“Cheeseburger”

Everyone seemed confused, looking around to see what other diners were doing. At last, someone picked up their plate and licked the cheeseburger off it. Then, of course, we all did.

Okay, a few years have gone by, and I don’t remember what we ate (except for the “cheeseburger”), but it was all good.

And our wonderful, playful (you had to be to work there) waiter came out, set up a tiny JBL speaker, played “Money” by Pink Floyd, and presented us with the check.

“Money” By Pink Floyd

So, yeah, Gaggan has stayed at the top of my favorite meal list to this day.

Postscript: after he left his namesake restaurant, he opened a new one—Gaggan Anand—on November 1, 2019, in Bangkok, which in 2021 debuted on ‘Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants’ at No. 5. We went there in 2023. It’s a whole other story which I’ll tell someday.