Sanat Chitrakar, Executive Chef at Taj Hotels Resorts and Palaces

Mr. Sanat Chitrakar is a middle-aged person of 50 years who hails from Calcutta. He is passionate about cooking, painting and singing. He also likes to go meet new people and visit places. He started his career in the year 1993 when he joined the Taj Mahal Hotel in New Delhi. Post which he moved to Dubai and joined the Intercontinental Group, Le Meridien. After gaining as much information and experience as he could, he came back to India in the year 2011 and joined Taj.

Sanat shares that his surname comes from the occupation of his entire family, they all are artisans, and keeping that legacy in his mind he moved to Delhi to opt for a course in Arts and join a college. But he ended up joining Taj Mahal because he was very fascinated with the lifestyle and the work culture. In the year 1998, he left his position at Taj and Joined Forte Grand. He has had a chance to visit and work in many places such a Maldives, Oman, Muscat, Doha, etc. After returning to India, he decided to move to Hyderabad and settle there.

Keeping in mind the experience of 16 years that he has in the Hospitality Industry, Mr Sanat recommends this to the young generation wanting to join the Industry. “Before I joined this industry, people wanted to learn Indian cuisines, because everyone loved Indian Food back then. But now the situation has changed, it’s more of fusion style. European people like Asian food and Asian people like European food. People have developed different tastes. For example, a person might like raw spinach since European people like raw spinach but Asian people don’t like raw spinach. My recommendation is to go for fusion and to focus on multi eaters. It’s important to learn everything these days including Indian, Asian, Chinese cuisines since people have varied tastes now. So, it’s best to learn about everything and be an all-rounder.”

Peoples’ tastes keep on changing every day. Some day they might like pasta and another day they might like noodles and the third day they might go for home-made chicken curry. With ever-changing tastes, it is best to learn everything.

Challenges are a part of every job, being a person with 16 years of experience, Mr Sanat considers that the biggest challenge as of now is the pandemic and the economic crisis that has come with it. Every day people are trying their best to pull the customer and satisfy them. They are trying to provide recommendations for every age group or every taste and customizing the dishes. During the pandemic naturally extra care has to be taken so we are trying our best to do that as well and putting in efforts in maintaining the hygiene standards.
These challenges are faced by everyone, but success only comes to a few. And for that success, you should be willing to work hard always and be able to satisfy everyone as well as yourself with it. When you achieve satisfaction, your success if known by others with just word of mouth as the people who are satisfied tends to tell other people about it automatically.

His one advice to everyone planning to join this industry or already working with this industry is to “Never stop learning. Keep learning as much as you can.”