food
Restaurant newly minted as Asia’s best to close in 2020
Chef Gaggan Anand's gourmet Indian restaurant in Bangkok will close in 2020. – AFP/Relaxnews pic, March 3, 2016.Fresh off of being named the best restaurant in Asia for the second year in a row this week, chef Gaggan Anand has announced plans to close his gourmet Indian restaurant in Bangkok in 2020.
It was a surprise announcement that puts an expiry date to his restaurant Gaggan, which has become one of the hottest dining destinations in Bangkok and the world in recent years.
Not long after winning the coveted No. 1 spot on Asia's 50 Best Restaurants which were held in Bangkok this week, Gaggan announced the news to a room full of international food journalists, abruptly changing the trajectory of the conversation from his win to his future.
The reason? To avoid burnout, boredom and fatigue, he said, and perhaps relocate entirely to Japan.
“I think in five years I could be getting to that point where I will become a person who gets grumpy, arrogant and pissed off the customers if I keep doing the same thing without any change,” he told Fine Dining Lovers.
Though the closure may be years away, Anand said he's been toying with the idea of opening a new restaurant in Japan by 2022 – his lucky number – that seats just six to seven diners.
The move to shutter at the peak of the restaurant's popularity takes a page directly from the playbook of one of the world's most legendary chefs.
Anand is a disciple of elBulli and chef Ferran Adrià, who did the unthinkable and closed the Catalan restaurant in 2011 when it was receiving two million reservation requests for 8,000 seatings.
The restaurant snagged the title of World's Best Restaurant five times and is widely credited for popularising molecular gastronomy.
Likewise, another Adria disciple, Danish celebrity chef Rene Redzepi, announced plans to raze his world famous Copenhagen restaurant Noma and resurrect it as an "urban farm", serving farm-to-table cuisine in the heart of the city thanks to a rooftop greenhouse.
Noma's final service will be on New Year's Eve in 2016. – AFP/Relaxnews, March 3, 2016.
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