The Unfiltered Story of Chef Vikas Khanna

There is a version of Chef Vikas Khanna the world knows: the charismatic television judge, the good Samaritan who fed 80 million people during Covid, or the immigrant who brought the forgotten flavours of India all the way to the Michelin guide. But sit with him long enough, and a different man surfaces: quieter, more tender and deeply reflective. Here’s the story of a young boy from a roofless kitchen in Amritsar who was told, repeatedly, that he was not a leader, and the women behind him: a grandmother, a mother and a sister, who refused to let him believe it.

"I grew up in an India with fewer resources, but far more gratitude," he says. "My grandmother, my biji, she was the one who showed me the true power of food. Having lived through Partition, she would tell me stories of how, when the borders were closing, she kept Muslim women hidden in her home. She fed them and protected them. She said food was never about what was on the plate. It was always about the person in front of you."

It was that grandmother who first took him to the Golden Temple, where the wealthy in their big cars and those with nothing much sat side by side and ate the same langar (shared meal of a community kitchen). "She would point at all of it, and say look, this is what food can do."

At 16, with zero formal training and minimal resources, Vikas opened a banquet operation in the back of his house. It had no roof, no air-conditioning and no plan. "When it rained, the kitchen flooded. And the guests also flooded, so we just kept going."

A few years later, he made it to hotel school, one of the most prestigious ones, in Manipal, India. He got selected as the 81st pick on an 80-person list, after making the admissions jury laugh with stories of aunties who mocked his food but asked him to pack ten more parathas anyway. Then he saw ‘the wall’. Literally a floor to ceiling wall of photographs of “white chefs, white sauces and white cookbooks”. This, he was told, is the standard he must aspire to.

"I asked, what about us?" he says. "And they told me something I will never forget, that I was not a leader. And that I’d have to work under them."

That year, when he went home for Diwali, he found his mother at 2am, on her knees, unclogging the drains of their banquet hall. "She was cleaning everything, the floors, the toilets, all by herself, in the middle of the night! That broke me, I was determined to turn the business into one of the biggest catering operations in all of Punjab," he said. The very next morning, he called the hotel school and quit. "But my decision and our efforts paid off, within 4 years I had a hundred people working for me. My grandmother and my mother, they were there, but not working anymore. They could just watch and enjoy it."

Aside from his mother and grandmother, it was truly his sister Radhika who saw something in him that he couldn't see in himself. "She called me brainless," he said, laughing. "She'd say, you don't even know what you've been gifted with. She was the one who told me to go to New York. I said, I'm not cut out for it, the Western world is a barricade. She said: do you remember the story of Hanumanji?" In Hindu mythology, when Lord Ram needed someone to leap across the ocean to Lanka, an army of monkeys tried and failed. A wise guru pulled a particular one aside and said: do you know that when you were a child, you could jump farther than any of them? It was us who dimmed that power because we feared it would make you arrogant. But it was never taken from you it was only hidden. Radhika said, "You are that Hanuman. You just don't know how far you can jump." He proceeded to New York with just a suitcase in hand.

New York was not the dream it appeared from the outside. There was extreme poverty, racism and a hunger that Chef Vikas has always said was forged in those years of struggle, not in India. But he kept going. And eventually, the love, the success and the accolades came. The morning after he received his Michelin star, one of the first Indian chefs in America to do so, he called his grandmother. "I told her, remember that wall? Remember the professor who said I wasn't a leader? She replied calmly and lovingly: remember, don't wear your crown all the time. It will break your back. You fought for it, and you won! But that is just a small part of who you are."

His beloved grandmother passed away three weeks later, at age 94. These words have deeply influenced him and his work ethic ever since.

Recently, Chef Vikas signed a major American television deal. They wanted an immigrant story, his story, but on their terms. "I told them I wanted to start the series with a Palestinian woman in New York City who packs food for cab drivers breaking their fast during Ramadan. They said, that's not exactly the kind of story we're looking for." He shakes his head. "I said, then I'm not the kind of host you're looking for."

He is now self-funding a show: 52 episodes, no network, no agenda, only the unsung everyday heroes. "People think I'm in the food business," he says. "I'm not, I have never been. I am in the people business. And to every single community that has looked at me and thought that this man is one of us, I owe them dearly.”

What advice would you give a young immigrant today, I asked. "Stay strong," he said. "But please, learn to be happy. The pressure will try to take your joy. Don't let it. Someone has spent their whole life, their whole youth, so that you could be standing where you're standing: your parents! Honour them by being happy, celebrate their wrinkles."

Seeing Chef Vikas now, it's hard to imagine that young boy, the one who walked away from hotel school carrying nothing but deep wounds and a mother's words. I asked, if he could go back to that boy today, what would he say? "I'd tell him not to be scared, those long nights will end. I'd also tell him, watch Shawshank Redemption a little earlier!" He laughs. "The idea that freedom comes from chipping away at one wall, one day at a time, that would’ve changed everything. And I'd tell him to stop looking for validation from people who were never going to give it to him."

Chef Vikas Khanna's Kinara at JA Lake View Hotel, Dubai, continues to bring India's forgotten culinary stories to the table, one intimate, meticulously crafted experience at a time.

@kinaradxb | @vikaskhannagroup | jaresortshotels.com.