Biographies
of professional and amateur chefs:
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Biography
: CHEF
SIMON SCOTT
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This
is a very short biography and if you want more information
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will usually find contact details. If you wish us
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us.
 Suvir
Saran
is a native of New Delhi, India who was raised on traditional
Indian cooking. He is a passionate and inventive cooking
teacher as well as a sort of unofficial ambassador of
Indian culture; wherever he goes (in India, Europe and
the United States) he finds himself teaching people
- colleagues in classes and jobs, strangers in airports
and on the street - to love the food and culture of
his native country.
Suvir
Saran
is a caterer, cooking teacher and food consultant. Suvir
studied music, fine arts and graphic design in Bombay
and then moved to New York City in 1993 to continue
those studies at The School of Visual Arts. In New York
he found himself once more assuming his role of cultural
ambassador, teaching an appreciation of Indian cooking
and culture just as he had done in his elementary school.
So when co-workers at Bergdorf Goodman, where he worked
as a buyer for home furnishings, took an interest in
the foods he was eating, he began bringing food in for
them, too.
 Sarans
partner, Chuck Edwards, and he also entertained most
each night, at their home in Greenwich Village. Saran
would cook after working a rigorous day, cooking was
meditative to him. Chuck was and remains his muse and
patient taster. It was for Chuck that Saran cooked his
first non-vegetarian dish. It's success made him try
cooking more with meats. Soon, it was the challenge
of cooking something without tasting that made him love
cooking meats completely. His colleagues and friends
fell in love with the food. It was, they said, the best
Indian food they had ever eaten: it wasn't too hot;
it had a nice balance of spices; it was comforting;
the taste was unusually delicate. Inevitably someone
asked him to cater a party and then someone else and
eventually he gave up his other work and concentrated
on catering and teaching Indian cooking.
In
1997 Suvir joined the staff of the Department of Food
and Nutrition at New York University's Professional
Development and Continuing Education Program where he
currently teaches Indian cooking. These classes have
been enormously popular and were listed in a recent
issue of New York Magazine (Schools for Scampi,
September 2000) as the most popular cooking classes
offered by New York University. Suvir also made New
York Magazine's list of the top forty caterers in the
country (Dish on the Top Forty Caterers, February
1999); his orange-mango soufflé with candied
mango peel and pomegranate seeds was featured on the
cover of that issue.
Suvir
now owns a catering and consulting business Rasoi, The
Indian Kitchen. Rasoi lists among its clients the Asia
Society, Carnegie Hall, the World Music Institute and
New York University. (Suvir catered an event for the
Asia Society in 1997 celebrating India's 50th year of
independence from the British for which guests paid
several thousand dollars per table.) Suvir's catering
and cooking classes have been favorably reviewed in
a variety of publications in addition to New York Magazine
including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times
and US News.
Suvir
is on the editorial team of Food Arts Magazine as contributing
authority for Indian food. His recipes and work have
also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times
and US News World Report. Suvir is director of marketing
for the Clubhouse Group that has opened restaurants
in Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlanta, and will open two
more restaurants this year in Dallas and Columbus, Ohio.
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Suvir
was featured in an article on the hottest caterers
in New York, in New York Magazine
Cover
Story - New York's Best Caterers
 Affair
to remember:
When the Music Festival of India celebrated India's
fiftieth year of independence at Carnegie Hall,
Saran reproduced Indian percussion instruments
out of lentils and floated them in bowls of vegetable
soup. A palate-cleanser was a tropical-juice concoction
from a recipe written in Arabic that he noticed
in a miniature painting from the seventeenth century.
Who
runs the show:
Saran was born in New Delhi and studied graphic
design in Bombay. He worked as a store manager
at the Metropolitan Museum, and then was briefly
a buyer for Bergdorf Goodman's home furnishings.
All the while, he was hosting lots of parties
at his West Village apartment. When he was growing
up, Savan's family had a chef who'd come with
his grandmother's dowry. "I used to keep
a diary since I was 7 years old on how he cooked,"
Savan says. He's been catering for three years
now.
Trés
Chic:
"People have not had the right exposure to
Indian food," says Savan. "Taxi drivers
started most of the restaurants here." The
dessert at Savan's Carnegie Hall dinner was orange-and-mango
souffles stuffed inside hollowed-out oranges.
At one event at Second Avenue's Foundry Theater,
the centerpieces were heaps of rice. On top of
each mound was a depression filled with a different
spice. "There were no table numbers,"
Saran recalls. "People had to ask each other
which spice was, say, lavender to find their tables."
Saran likes to substitute yogurt for butter in
a lot of his cooking. He also totes a mini tandoor
oven around with him to jobs.
At
your service:
Waiters wearing paisley shawls.
The
dish:
Betsy von Furstenberg hosted a fund-raising dinner
at her home for thirty people. "She's proud
of her own Indian cooking," Saran says, noting
that after her guests sampled his chicken breast
with apricot-and-plum sauce, Von Furstenberg joked,
"You've ruined it for me. I can't have these
people over again and cook Indian food."
The
tab:
Cocktails from $40 per person (including tandoori
hors d'oeuvre); three-course dinners from $75.
Minimum food cost, $600; dinner parties for 4
to 350 persons; cocktails to 500.
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If
you would like to visit Suvir Saran's web site
click
here
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