How Leela’s chef Manav Tuli overcame setbacks to chart a path to international acclaim
- The jovial Indian chef, formerly of Rosewood’s Chaat, shares how family influences and setbacks in his youth were part of his path to achieving culinary success
“My father never wanted me to get into F&B. He didn’t want me to even get close to it,” reveals Manav Tuli. It’s a surprising revelation from a man at the top of his profession, whose restaurants in Hong Kong have been awarded Michelin stars and who was duly named best chef earlier this year at the 100 Top Tables awards event.
We chat in the private dining room at Tuli’s newest concept, Leela, the floor-to-ceiling windows flooding the room with sunlight. His previous restaurant, Chaat, focused on Indian street food, albeit elevated for the Rosewood crowd, while Leela is unashamedly about the royal food of a bygone India. Tuli says it was the evocative stories of his grandmother, which described an older, more regal India, that inspired the concept and menu.
Food was clearly important to Tuli from a young age. He describes his father as “one of those who does not eat to live but lives to eat”, a man who, until recent years, could indulge in 20 rasgullas (sweet, syrupy balls of dough) at a time.
But it is the cooking of his Punjabi grandmother that really animates Tuli. His eyes widen with excitement and he leans forward across the table to impart how his grandmother, as a wealthy hostess and a leader of the local village, came to know numerous different recipes, from wild boar pickle to fish head curry to mango purée with vermicelli. “Everything was stored in her head,” Tuli recalls, “Nothing was ever written down. She didn’t even know how to read or write.”
Tuli never lost these familial memories and, now a professional chef, he is able to recall and dissect his grandmother’s recipes in detail. They inspired numerous dishes at Leela and these creations, he says “still sing the songs of time when we were all together”, before admitting with a wry smile, “I still can’t make them as good as she used to.”
Tuli is a man of unexpected sensitivity. “I was a big failure,” he sighs at one point during our interview, and throughout our conversation he describes his younger self at various times as “very introverted”, a crybaby or “p***ed off with everyone”. Yet out on the restaurant floor with guests he is quick to laugh and all smiles, his childlike giggle frequently floating above the chatter of the dining room. His eagerness to please and slightly rotund figure lend Tuli the air of an epicurean Santa Claus.
