Chef Suresh Pillai cooks for Viswanathan Anand and Gukesh Dommaraju at Anand’s home on August 27
Chef Suresh Pillai, a former MasterChef BBC contestant, cooked and served a bespoke dinner for grandmasters Viswanathan Anand and Gukesh Dommaraju at Anand’s home on August 27 after receiving a request from the chess portal to organise the meal. Gukesh Dommaraju is identified in the account as a grandmaster and the reigning World Chess Champion.
When he was a schoolboy in Kerala, Suresh Pillai pawned his mother’s gold earrings for ₹300 to enter a chess tournament in Kollam; "The experience was overwhelming. I lost in the first round. I went to the bathroom and cried because there was no way to make back the ₹300," he says. He later abandoned an early dream of becoming a chess grandmaster because the game required capital and coaching he did not have, but his love for chess endured. Between busy service hours, particularly while working in Michelin-star restaurants in London, he would log into chess.com for quick games, and he says he used to "cut out pictures and posters of Vishy Anand and stick it in my notebook. This was nothing short of a dream-come-true-moment for me."
Despite a packed schedule during the Onam period, the chef flew from Kochi to cook at Anand’s home; arrangements for the evening were made by Anand’s wife Aruna. "I bought the fish and sea food from Kochi but the rest was ready for an evening of service. I chatted with Vishy and Gukesh at dinner. Vaishali Rameshbabu (another grandmaster) was supposed to join us for dinner as the only vegetarian on the table but she was unwell so she couldn’t make it," he says.
Pillai planned the menu around the structure of a chess game, with an opening, a gambit, a middle and a checkmate. The first course was a Kerala twist on pani puri called sambharam kadumanga pani puri; the gambit was turmeric prawns cooked in fresh coconut milk, garnished with a shrimp chamandi. The chef said both Gukesh and Vishy asked for seconds and thirds, and his signature King Fish Nirvana, poached in banana leaf, occupied the centre of the meal.
Suresh said that Vishy Anand and his wife, who had spent years in Spain, enjoyed seafood but ate it rarely, and that informed the selection of dishes. Between courses, Pillai described each preparation while the diners conversed and exchanged gossip and jokes around the table.
Pillai asked the two players about pre-game routines and reported: "I asked them what they best like to eat before a game. Anand and Gukesh, it turns out, share a pre-match ritual of their own — a bowl of curd rice before a big game, when they can get it," Suresh says. Reflecting on the meal, Anand said: "We were all relaxed and in a good mood. So we had lots of banter and got to enjoy some amazing food. Even the first course itself really had us excited. It was raw mango with buttermilk as the pani for a different kind of pani puri. It was amazing and I have to say every course after that was spectacular," says Vishy Anand.
The dinner concluded with a bowl of silky paalada pradhanam, and Pillai left with a metal chessboard signed by Anand and Gukesh as a keepsake. "I told Anand sir that I’ve spent 30 years in the industry, working at some Michelin-star restaurants, five star hotels, and even street food shops. I have served a lot of celebrities, politicians, and billionaires. All is good. But this memory... this I will save as my personal favourite," he says.