The story 🔥
Polite food bored us, so we quit it.
I started Gaggan because polite food bored me. So we ripped the menu cards in half, swapped the words for emojis, and dared the room to keep up. Twenty five bites, no cutlery, no rules you would recognise, just hands, fire, and a kitchen that talks back.
01
Cook loud
If a plate whispers, it never made it out of the kitchen. We want a reaction, every single bite.
02
No cutlery, no problem
You eat with your hands here. It is faster, it is honest, and it makes grown adults grin.
03
Feed people right
Service should feel like your funniest friend who happens to cook. Generous, fast, never stiff.
Devika Anand runs the pass like a pit crew and writes the menu in emojis on purpose.
She trained across Kolkata, Lisbon and a few kitchens she will not name, then landed in Bangkok to cook the food nobody would let her cook anywhere else. Her one rule: if a plate does not make you laugh or swear, it goes back on the fire.
Devika Anand
Chef and RingleaderHow we got loud
2010
We open with a tiny room, a big mouth, and an emoji menu nobody asked for.
2016
The line doubles, the coal pit arrives, the noise gets a lot better.
2021
We blow up the format and rebuild the whole run from scratch.
Now
Still loud, still booked out, still cooking the food nobody else would.