The Places Worked!
Known around the world by his friends as “Willi”, I am an original “Kiwi/Aussie”, who has been working in Asia for the past 40 years, while I have lived in Chennai for the last 21 of them and in India for over 26 years now, before finally leaving for Malaysia and the start of the next phase of my life. I arrived in Calcutta in 1996 for three years as executive Chef where I was involved heavily in the upgrading of the Food and Beverage operations at the Oberoi Grand as Executive Chef as well as catering to Mother Theresa’s funeral guests who stayed with us. It was here that my reputation started in India and I still have friends who were work colleagues or guests from those days! A short stint for eighteen months in Goa helping to renovate a small privately operated hotel was followed by Mumbai as Executive Chef of The Leela Kempinski Hotel. Early 2002 it was time to move down to Chennai to open the kitchens of The Park Hotel, a very contemporary hotel right in the heart of the city. I took up the role of Director of Food and Services at the Hotel before tragedy overtook me and my wife died and was cremated here in Chennai. It was after this that I left hotel work and became a Director of Burgundy Restaurants and the Tuscana group until December 2015, for which I opened and made the concepts and the naming of, and then became a very popular chain of Italian restaurants in Chennai. With Tuscana at Wallace Gardens, Tuscana on Chamiers by Willi and Kryptos by Willi we operated some of the best stand-alone restaurants in the city, specializing in thin-crust pizza, pasta, Italian and Greek Cypriot dishes.
I next embarked in a new direction with my own company in Chennai, “Chef Willi’s Restaurants and Consultancy Pvt. Ltd”, where I offered restaurant start-up services and consultancy, operational training and system setups and generally helping smaller places get started with advice, design services, menu planning, recipes, photo back-up and anything else that was needed. Now closed, the consultancy worked with fika Café, Mechanics Resto Bar, Butterfly Café, Hibiscus Café, H.O.G in Hyderabad, Infinitea in Bangalore, Blind Ch3mistry, Jonah’s group of restaurants in Chennai and Bangalore, Green Meadows Resort, Kipling Café, Buhari Hotel, a Yercaud Café and many smaller operations. Up until Oct 2023 my main operations was at fika Café, in Adyar as Operations Manager. Since October I have relocated to Malaysia, my next port of call! I have cooked for George Bush senior, for Princess Michael at Mother Teresa’s funeral, John Prescott, ex-deputy Prime Minister of Britain, and the Aussie, South African and Indian cricket teams, plus anyone else who has walked through the restaurant doors over the years!!! But the most satisfying meal made was a dinner party I cooked for my mother and her friends in 2004, the first one I had made in all the years of cooking and just three months before she unexpectedly passed on.
I have worked in two 1000-room hotels with the largest kitchen having 180 staff, my largest restaurant worked as the Chef had 750 covers, the smallest had 32 covers, and the busiest was in China before Tiananmen Square. So far, I have worked riverboats, a 95-foot sailing schooner, opened six restaurants and four hotels as Executive Chef and many more as a consultant! I have even cooked on the Great Wall of China itself! I have been a firefighter, a rugby player, a horticulturist, a squash player and a swimmer, and I was even a farm driver on a 40,000-acre farm at one stage as well as a soldier apprentice cook, but mostly I am just a cook, and as the famous Chef Antonio Carluccio once said to me, “We shall always be a cook, no matter how grand our title is!” This I take pride in, and in my small achievements and the achievements of my colleagues who have all moved on to bigger and brighter futures than myself, as my biggest goal we should all have, is to have so many staff who have worked for us over the years, becoming more senior and extremely respected members of the profession, both here and abroad! This is what I love!!!
Over the years I have had the privilege to work and help develop many hospitality professionals in India. Some achieved Michelin status overseas and there now are many who are based and doing extremely well in various countries around the world, while others have achieved excellent positions here within India, both in Management or working the kitchens. Hopefully and maybe, I have been instrumental in some way in shaping their careers into their strong hospitality positions today, and it is well-known that a reference letter with my signature on it will enable any young cook to gain an American visa to pursue their cruise line positions overseas.
The Oberoi Grand where I worked from 1996 to 1999, is the premiere deluxe business hotel of Calcutta offering all the comforts of a luxury hotel with state of the art business facilities. It is affectionately known as the ‘Grande Dame of Calcutta’ and with 213 rooms it is distinguished with green marble floors, Corinthian columns, balustrades, classical pediments and palms that all adds to an air of turn-of-the-century colonial grandeur. The hotel was completely refurbished during the late 1990’s and early 2000, with all the restaurants coming under renovation while I was present, although Gharana opened its doors soon after my arrival. It has the ultramodern La Terrasse restaurant, which is a French Brasserie style restaurant offering a range of international cuisine from a buffet and a la carte plus two specialty restaurants, Gharana for fine dining from Royal India and Baan Thai for authentic Thai cuisine in a traditional ambiance. The banqueting and meeting rooms cater for up to 1,000 people. Even though I came through here for the interview and had a look at the place, there is no way that anyone can be prepared for the realization of Calcutta. I had heard about the position through a friend of mine and decided that working in India was certainly an exciting prospect and a challenge. A challenge it certainly was, and a lot harder than I ever expected it to be. I have handled tough properties before, as in Kunming, where I had stress fractured my leg the day before opening and still managed 36 hours on my feet, and in Beijing where I worked right through the Tiananmen Square episode, but this one has caught me out! Luckily though we survived three years here, bought in a lot of changes, made a lot of friends both from the guests and the staff and moved on to another property in India after it all! Calcutta is a city that has totally fallen apart!
The Oberoi Grand 1996
Kenilworth Goa 1999
Goa was at one time under Portuguese rule until fairly recently and are generally a carefree, happy people who believe hospitality is an art and not an industry liberally moistened with its famous Feni cashew spirit! It is also a part of India with two lots of seasons, the tourist season and the off-season, or the monsoons and the rest when it is full of British tourists and now Russian as well. Marg and I really enjoyed out time in Goa, where we got ourselves back together, decided our marriage was worth keeping and became a couple once more after the separation of Calcutta. The Kenilworth Beach Resort is situated in South Goa at Utorda Beach, just up from the older Majorda Beach Resort, and quite a way away from the backpacker areas in north Goa. We were there as Management while it underwent a period of complete renovation and refurbishment, and which was my first management position outside the kitchens. While we had barren walls, mud paths and trenches, waste and barrenness, the Kenilworth has now been transformed into fresh water pools which provides multiple depths for swimming as well as deep diving located next to the wide sandy beaches and the sea itself. The 14,000 square foot swimming pool is one of the finest and largest blue water pools in India, and my claim to fame being the suggestion to make a divide in keeping with the aesthetics, so that the whole pool never needed to be closed for maintenance, always a bane of tourists who visit outside popular times! within the Resorts premises, it also has an attached Jacuzzi and water slides as well as a sunken bar. The grounds now have lawns instead of mud and there are still a lot of palm and coconut trees. The hotel itself has 107 rooms with banqueting and restaurants with Palms being the Coffee Shop, while Galaxee – Sizzler Restaurant and Sea Hawk – Beach Front Shack are opened only during the season. The last two of these were not opened while we were there, with renovations just coming to a close. We stumbled in making budgets for the whole property, a little different than just kitchen budgets and this shortened our stay there. Marg also worked doing sales and marketing there, so with visits around plus a bit of a social life we were quite happy, enjoying a beach coffee break on the beach each evening where we talked and communicated as two people should! We picked up a pup from the hotel gates that we took in, and luckily found a great home for him once we were leaving, but always so heart breaking! We spent a month at the end of our time in Goa at a beach house very close to the beach during the monsoon, with torrents of rain coming down on the tiled roof it was a unique experience and actually so wroth while! Next we travelled through Mumbai back to NZ and that then led us to our next position at the Leela!
I arrived at the The Leela Kempinski Bombay (Mumbai) with its 420 odd rooms in 2000, after passing through the hotel on the way out to New Zealand after the Kenilworth and then meeting the GM. A month or so later he called me back to work there, so Marg and I went back to India! The had just let go the Chef due to some internal politics and what I did not know, was I was the interim Chef until the Chairman could bring him back again! This was a very family pollical hotel! Anyway, we started, had a good eighteen months or so there, went through the Gujarat earthquake shakes in the hotel and also witnessed on TV the 9/11 attacks like a lot of people. We went then on holiday to Kerela instead of the planned one through Kenya while we waited for the world to settle down again and was just gearing up for our second Christmas there when we were no longer needed and the previous Chef was brought back! Some excuse about the attacks, but still not great. So, we went again to New Zealand and had the first Christmas New Year with my mother and the family since 1972 or so, some blessings always come out of things you think are adverse. The hotel was quite good as it was close to the airport, and after the trips in Calcutta and Goa to get to the airports, this trip was a real blessing! Whilst there I redesigned the main kitchen placing the Chef Office and associated on a mezzanine floor to gain space and then the Café underwent it’s renovation and became the Citrus Café. Along with the café, there was the Indian Harvest, an Indian specialty restaurant, Ming Court for the Chinese restaurant and Fiorella was the specialty Italian restaurant. Along with that, there is Lobby and Pool service, a cake shop, and banqueting, plus squash court, night club etc. While I got on very well with the two General Managers, Phillipe and Hans Henk, the Chairman was a very traditional person that I could not really connect to, old time Indian that has excellent values but not easy for me to fit into. Old history now as the hotel has been passed onto the younger generation and it still runs with a great name in the market!
The Park Hotel 2002
I arrived at The Park Hotel at the end of January 2002, and was actually the 3rd person to arrive after VV Giri, the GM and then the Chief Engineer, Pradhan! I was the day before the HR Manager, which always annoyed Sundeep! As it was, Marg and I accepted the invitation from Priya Paul to become the opening Chef, and after six years in India already, we thought we would work it for six months and then move on! Twenty one years later I finally left Chennai! The Park had part of the kitchen in the restaurant, and after many years with more local hotels available, the expat and general populace of Chennai was craving for a Chef who understood their wants and needs and was also very available to talk to, and so my reputation in Chennai was born! The Park is located in the centre of Chennai at Gemini corner in Nungambakkam and we opened on the 15th May 2002. It is a boutique Hotel, inspired by Priya Paul, the owner, with a very personal touch for each piece of artwork and theme and a unique story of textures, surfaces, shadow and light inspired by film and performance in its various forms in keeping with its film past as the old Gemini film studios. We made cuisine is also built on this theme, with stylish innovative presentations and choices with a semi-wood pizza oven plus the unique pasta bar located in the restaurant itself! While I was directly responsible for the food items served throughout the property, Priya had given a free hand to create and produce a range of dishes that reflected the desired luxury and quality that was being striven for by our property. All this is in keeping with making the hotel truly unique and a sophisticated landmark in the heart of Chennai! I am credited with introducing international cuisine, wood-fired pizza and Italian pasta into the Chennai cuisine scene and all I can say is I arrived at the right time, in the right place and with the right Hotel owner to be able to achieve this. There was a Chef Hardy at the Taj Chinese restaurant that chatted to his guests, and then I came along, and the scene changed, with some of our guests eating breakfast, lunch and dinner each day in the restaurants, and at the end of the day, everyone knew Chef Willi. The Leather Bar was the only place in town to be seen at, along with Pasha and then there was Lotus, our Thai restaurant, the Banqueting and Aqua the roof top pool and bar. While our kitchens were good and spacious, the Aqua kitchen was a tiny hell hole, regularly exceeding 50 degrees C in temp and tough for the boys to work in. A good mix in the kitchens, some ladies which I always like to encourage, and now my ex-Park team is now scattered right across the globe in all sorts of positions and cooking all sorts of cuisines, but from 2002 to 2007, we really had something special happening at The Park!
Tuscana & Kryptos Restaurants 2008
Tuscana & Kryptos restaurants have their own page which I helped set-up, operate and ran for five years before starting at fika;
Click here to go to Tuscana & Kryptos Restaurants page
fika Cafe 2019
Welcome to the world of fika, a ritual that’s important in Swedish culture, giving yourself a moment to have a break and socialise with a coffee! That is the concept that went into fika Café in Adyar when Pooja, Mahendran and the team got together to transform a rundown house into one of Chennai’s most simplistic, yet elegant restaurants! I started here designing the kitchen and menus as a consultant and then ended up being employed as Operations Manager during and after the lock downs! It seems a lot of my photos are of construction and rebuilding and fika is no different, with an excellent kitchen fitted, wood-fired pizza and a lady who was interested in good food, a good family restaurant with activities for the kids, and with a courtyard experience although under cover and cooled from the Chennai sun. At fika we served what I called modern bistro food, incorporating flavours from around the world, looking at different and unusual combinations and asking my team for the utmost quality and above all else, consistency. Over time we expanded our Pastry Bakery kitchen into a sub-kitchen rivalling any hotel operation and from the pastry and the hot kitchens we supplied to other restaurants and business a range of hot and bakery products. We also sub-contracted out my services from fika, helping others to setup their operations, continuing with some from my consulting days and generally just a good way to off-set some of my salary incurred by fika. Always making sure we were not overlapping or cutting within our business area, I was able to continue with Hibiscus, The Mughal and a few others that came along. fika operated on word of mouth, we did not partake in social media or go chasing for google votes and yet we enjoyed an enviable reputation within the market and once again I had a very successful restaurant that I was part of and responsible for.
After my consultancy was forced to close by the Government, fika took the plunge and brought me back on an employment visa, but with continued problems arising firstly with the visa issuance, finding out it was not going to be renewed, taking months at a time to get the FRRO registration issued and then finally the tax man stepping up and looking at every cent of mine from around the world, but under the Indian tax rate, it was time to leave! That was the time an opportunist trip to Malaysia for a few days break saw me do the sums and decide the time was right to move across the water and with the most important four-legged members of my family in Chennai also able to come across with me! Now my lovely wife is arriving in Malaysia, so eight long years of not meeting in India and being a family, once more we are going to be together!!!! Thank you, Malaysia!!