Serving up a memory

If we can eat together, we can live together.

And I've had more meals with Mohammed Imtiaz Qureshi, the legendary chef who passed away this month at 93, than I can count. Our daily luncheons at Dum Pukht at Delhi's ITC Maurya (the restaurant was closed for lunch) weren't just about an F&B manager and a master chef talking business. They were lessons in gastronomy and life.

Imtiaz started out as a raqabdaar, or royal chef, in Lucknow. But his talent and ambitions were global in scale. This is the man who gave regional recipes an international platform, and who built the vocabulary by which we understand so many north Indian cooking traditions today.

When I joined the Maurya in the 1980s, Imtiaz was already a force in the kitchens. He was obsessed with ingredients and the quality of the in-house butchery. He had no intention of being polite or politically correct. He barked out orders, sought complete submission, but valued execution.