Self Service: The owner — and the staff — eat here

Eat a balanced meal before your appointment. While fainting isn't listed as a common COVID-19 vaccine side effect, the CDC has received reports of people fainting after nearly all vaccines. But fainting during or after a vaccination is typically triggered by anxiety or pain rather than the vaccine itself. In addition to getting some reassurance about the procedure, drinking a beverage and eating a snack before the vaccination process have been shown to sometimes prevent anxiety-related fainting, the CDC says. In addition to anxiety or pain, low blood sugar can also cause fainting. So eating a meal that helps regulate your blood sugar before your shot is a smart strategy, especially if you have a history of feeling faint during any vaccination process. Your best bet for blood sugar regulation is a combo of veggies, paired with lean protein, nutrient- and fiber-rich carbs, and healthy fat. If your appointment is in the morning, consider eating "zoats," oatmeal mixed with shredded zucchini, fruit, and nuts or seeds. Or go for a veggie and avocado omelet (made with eggs or chickpeas) with a side of fresh fruit. If your appointment is in the afternoon, fuel up with a grain bowl, made with greens and veggies, lentils, quinoa, and tahini, or a taco salad, made with greens, salsa, black beans, roasted corn, and guacamole. If you get nervous before your appointment and you don't feel like eating, try a smoothie made with spinach, plant protein powder or Greek yogurt, plant milk, banana, berries, and nut butter. Or sip a green juice and nibble a fruit and nut bar. (Image: Moneycontrol)

Late in the afternoon, after the lunch crowd at the Fig & Maple thins out, the last of the lurking diners often ask for something that is not on the menu of the Delhi-based restaurant. Indian tapri-style chai, spiked with hearty measures of milk, masala, and sugar is a popular request of that hour — a world apart from the subtle infusions with sil timur or kaffir lime for which the breakfast and brunch eatery is best known. “That is our staff tea,” says chef-owner Radhika Khandelwal, with a laugh. “But guests can tell when it is brewing and always want some.”

Khandelwal herself is the first to drink a glass, along with a snack from a different region that the team has made a habit of cooking for themselves every evening. Stuffed mathi, vada pao, and because many of the cooks are from Nepal, sel roti, deep-fried golden rings made of slightly sweetened rice flour, or buckwheat pancakes called baras have become staples too. “After every trip back home, the cooks bring back ingredients from their villages, and dishes their mothers or grandmothers cooked,” she shares. “It is a fun, interactive way for everyone in the kitchen to learn about everyone else’s culinary heritage.”

Every restaurant has its own approach to staff meals or 'family meals' as many in the business like to call it. Large five-star operations typically provide catered food to their staff, whereas independent fine-dining kitchens encourage cooks to take turns feeding the rest of the staff. Chefs like to enjoy these in each other’s company or, in the cold room, temporarily stepping away from the angry gaze of furnaces and bosses. Besides sustenance, these breaks between services or and at the end of a long day have variously come to represent a moment of comfort, team-bonding, and training in the industry.

“It is a ‘family meal’ because we spend way more time in the restaurant than with our families,” explains Hussain Shahzad, executive chef of Mumbai-based Hunger Inc Hospitality. Staff meals have been more functional in these kitchens after the pandemic but before the outbreak, their elaborate Friday lunches, enjoyed by 20-25 people in one sitting, made for some of the restaurants’ most popular Instagram posts. In the group’s The Bombay Canteen, with its India-focused menu, young chefs were tasked with researching and cooking rare regional fare once a week, which resulted in meals from the Konkan coast to Nagaland. The Saoji cuisine of Nagpur, mainly sinus-clearing meat gravies featuring a closely guarded combination of toasted spices, was a revelation for all at one such meal.

Conversely, at their Goan and Portuguese-inspired O Pedro, the kitchen staff rustle up international-themed treats for each other in a “tempura Friday” or “shawarma Thursday”, for instance. “It has helped cooks understand how certain ingredients or cooking styles reached a region, how colonisation happens,” observes Shahzad, adding that these thoughtful spreads are a far cry from the boxed meals he was handed during his own apprenticeship. Equal parts work and pleasure, this has been a way for trainee chefs to make an impression and to pick up some tricks. The bar team pitches in with non-alcoholic brews, while the pastry chefs whip up desserts and salads. One ritual binds staff meals at the two restaurants, however. When the staff walks in the morning after partying on New Year’s eve, a standard tonic greets them: an Indo-Chinese “dirty” manchow soup with fried noodles.

After dealing with truffle oil, nut butter or microgreens all day, even pro chefs prefer their daily nosh to carry the unadorned magic of home. By and large, the family meal is kept simple also because it caters to the restaurant’s floor and support staff too. Allergies and religious beliefs have to be acknowledged. One cook at Bengaluru’s Northwest Kebab & Curryhouse is charged with keeping pots of dal and curry bubbling on the back burner, to be served with hot chapatis whenever the others are ready for their breaks, says Shyam Sundar Bhaskaran, partner and chef. These preparations are thinner and distinctly different from his restaurant offerings which are enriched with saffron, cashew and almond pastes.

The pandemic has been hard on the dining industry in general but chef Amninder Sandhu reckons it has brought her team closer as they have shared most meals in this time, and have been living together to ensure minimal contact and movement. Restaurant philosophies around sustainability and root-to-shoot cooking — or using all parts of the produce — also apply to staff meals. At Sandhu’s Mumbai-based delivery-only service Iktara, pumpkin peels are enlisted to thicken up chutneys and bitty trimmings of meat or vegetable get a second chance in shammi kebabs and shorbas. She joins the team once a week post-lunch service. Seasonality is visible in what the kitchen staff crave too. Right now, it is sabja-studded shikanjis or watermelon and khus coolers. At Khandelwal’s Fig & Maple, the leafy saags which the staff preferred in winter are giving way to gourd and squash-based curries.

Manish Mehrotra of Indian Accent fame characterises the staff meal as simple, substantial, and at times strange

Manish Mehrotra of Indian Accent fame characterises the staff meal as simple, substantial, and at times strange. While his New York outpost takes turns making the staff meals themselves, a dedicated chef takes charge of family meals in the New Delhi venue. Mehrotra had to shut his London restaurant owing to global headwinds last year. The team in America does not yearn for Indian food, preferring sandwiches and Thai curries instead, he says, while his India staff is good with plates of puri bhaji or poha and the all-important, and regular, supply of tea. He paid ode to the unlikely snacks chefs grab for themselves in the hustle and bustle of the kitchen — folding in fiery keema with some pasta, for instance, or using a flaky croissant to sop up a bowl of dal makhni — by putting them on the menu. “We used to have a  ‘today’s staff special’ for our Delhi guests to try,” he says, adding that it was stopped when the restaurant shifted location in 2017. “Maybe we should bring it back.”