Chess grandmaster’s menu: What Chef Suresh Pillai cooked for Viswanathan Anand, Gukesh

When he was a schoolgoer in Kerala, former Masterchef BBC contestant and celebrity Chef Suresh Pillai pawned his mother’s gold earrings for ₹300 to take part in 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,” says Chef Suresh.

He may have traded a chessboard for a cutting board and knife as the game required capital and a coach: both of which he did not possess back in the day. But one thing has remained unchanged : Suresh’s love for the game. Between busy service hours, particularly when he was working in the Michelin-star restaurants of London, he would always find time to log onto chess.com (a free online portal to play people and bots based on ranking) for a quick game.

It is why when he received a call from the chess portal to organise and serve dinner at Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand’s house on August 27 for Vishy and Gukesh Dommaraju (grandmaster and reigning World Chess Champion), Suresh was nothing short of elated. The chef who once dreamed of becoming a grandmaster, finally sat at the same table as one.

“When I was playing the game, I would 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,” he says. Despite having a calendar overflowing like a pot of palada pradhaman for the Malayali festival of Onam, the chef flew from Kochi for dinner, where arrangements for cooking were made by Vishy’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.

The dinner was served, keeping a game of chess in mind. There was an opening move, a gambit, the middle game, and a checkmate. The sambharam kadumanga pani puri, a Kerala twist on the Indian classic was the deceptively simple first move. Turmeric prawns cooked in fresh coconut milk, garnished with a shrimp chamandi, were served as the bold gambit. Both Gukesh and Vishy asked for seconds and thirds, the chef reckoned.

King Fish Nirvana — poached in banana leaf, Suresh’s signature dish — was the unhurried king at the board’s centre. Suresh said that Vishy Anand and his wife, who had spent years in Spain, enjoyed seafood but ate it rarely. It was the basis of conceptualising this meal, the chef said.

Chef Pillai’s signature Fish Nirvana
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Between courses, Suresh explained each dish, and the table did what chess players do best: joked around, traded gossip, caught up on who would next cross paths on the circuit. “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.

“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 meal ended with a bowl of silky paalada pradhanam.

Retrospectively, the meal allowed Chef Suresh to look back on all the years he had spent rising up the ranks, waiting tables at a restaurant in Kollam, teaching himself to cook, and then heading the kitchen at some of the world’s most famously ranked restaurants. Much of this was possible thanks to chess, he says, as it allowed him to think several steps ahead.

Now, he has a metal chessboard signed by the two grandmasters 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.