Manish Mehrotra’s Delhi home is lived-in: everything has a place but nothing feels curated. It has been shaped by the people who have lived here for years. Today, it is shared by three generations: his mother, Mehrotra and his 19-year-old daughter Adah, currently a line cook in New York.Her old bedroom is now a storeroom for his tools and the things he picks up on his travels. They video call every day. “She tells me if she got scolded or if she burnt her hand, and I tell her about my day,” he says.As one who is always excited about new tools, in his heavy kit are moulds, cutters, fish-bone tweezers and a zester with a tiny brush for zesting at the table. Then there is his Sujata mixer, which goes with him when he travels on tours, even to pop-ups in Switzerland.The refrigerator is covered with photographs of him with Adah and his late wife, Vindhya, who died during Covid.On the morning we visit, he is in the kitchen making chole bhature, and has already got rasmalai for desserts.Patna wala choleGrowing up in a joint family in Patna and the younger of two brothers, Mehrotra spent his days playing cricket and reading Amar Chitra Katha, Phantom and Mandrake comics. At home, life revolved around food. “There wasn’t much beyond television and food,” he says. “We made food, watched TV, made some more food. With music, that was the only entertainment.” Since most of the family were strict vegetarians, meals meant dal, chawal, chapati, two sabzis and raita. Meat could only be eaten outside the house. Eggs were only allowed on the terrace, cooked on a separate kerosene stove with separate utensils.Festivals brought the kitchen alive. Janmashtami was the big one: paneer sabzi, two kinds of coconut barfi and a khoya barfi, all made at home. There was cold, thickened milk with makhana and dry fruits and pooris and kachoris. The family would decorate the jhankis (tableaux) with fairy lights.Story continues below this ad Chef Manish Mehrotra in his kitchen (Gajendra Yadav)Chole bhature was “chhutti ke din wali dish”. The chickpeas are boiled with hing, methi, kasuri methi, imli, amchoor, javitri and jaiphal. There is also dried amla, “which nobody else puts in.” The dough rests for an hour-and-a-half, before the poori-like bhaturas are rolled out. He grinds the dry masala in his Sujata mixer. There’s no onion, tomato or garlic in the chole that is served with roasted and spiced aloo on the side.The recipe isn’t really his mother’s, he admits, adding that he was never one of those kids who spent their time in the kitchen. In fact, he had never cooked as a boy. Hotel school was actually a way out. “It was either that or running my father’s petrol pump,” he says.The family hesitated over sending him to Bombay, which seemed a frightening city for a boy from Bihar. But his elder brother stood up for him: “The whole world goes, why can’t he?” So in 1993, Mehrotra moved to Bombay to study at Dadar Catering College. He picked the kitchen partly because his struggle with English made front-office work difficult. “But it taught me that you could be from a small town or a Hindi-medium background but you can do it.”Next came the four years at Thai Pavilion under Chef Ananda Solomon, who taught him to read a guest’s mind. Then Delhi, followed by four years in London, which he likens to “Hamleys for a kid”. There, he held his first live lobster and had foie gras.Story continues below this adIn 2009, he opened Indian Accent, helping redefine what Indian fine dining could look like. Nostalgia, he says, was part of it from day one. That sensibility continues at Delhi’s Nisaba.Before its opening in January this year, Mehrotra took a year off and did “nothing”. He fixed the house and began growing plants on the terrace, which now has lemongrass, basil, karela, hazara narangi and lemon.There’s always room for a bookMuch of his inspiration comes from books. “I only buy recipe books. The rest, people gift,” he says. Every month, he goes online for new releases. He rarely cooks a recipe straight off the page. “You look at it once and something clicks in your head.”But a few books are eternal favourites with Mehrotra. The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit is one. Another is an early (Yotam) Ottolenghi book on salads that aren’t built on lettuce. A third is a fish butchery book he recommends to young chefs working with seafood. He keeps every issue of Art Culinaire Magazine for photography and plating ideas.Story continues below this adHis own Indian Accent Restaurant Cookbook (2016) still makes him proud. Two more are in the works: one on Nisaba-style recipes and another on chaat alone, which he hopes will release next year. “There isn’t a dedicated chaat cookbook,” he says. He has already catalogued over 60 varieties, including singhara ki chaat, made with boiled, pureed water chestnut.As we talk, the table is ready. The bhatures — smaller than their restaurant counterparts — are ready. The table is laid with fine crockery, with bowls of chole, rice and a simple onion-and-cucumber salad.We are curious, what does a chef eat after a long day at work? “Bhel puri, a cheese sandwich or Maggi. Always soupy and always made by me.” Maggi?” We express surprise. “If chefs say they don’t eat Maggi, they are lying,” he says.