MasterChef’s Sashi Cheliah gears up to launch Pandan Club in Chennai

Sashi was the winner of MasterChef Australia Season 10. This will be his first restaurant in India, in T Nagar, serving Peranakan cuisine and lemongrass cocktails

Police officer turned MasterChef contestant turned chef turned restaurateur Sashi Cheliah seems apologetic about his requirements for his first restaurant in India. “The thing is, we need professional chefs for this project,” he says, over filter coffee at the Leela Palace lobby, glittering with chandeliers and fragrant with vases of marigolds.

In Chennai with World On A Plate, Sashi is relaxing after cooking seven-course degustation menus, two nights in a row, for completely sold-out dinners at The Leela Palace. Then, true to form, the Singapore-born, Adelaide-based chef headed straight from the five-star kitchen to Chennai’s popular Erode Amman Mess for his own dinner. “It was fantastic,” he says, “When it comes to flavour there are so many great places to eat in this city.”

With roots in Tamil Nadu, including grandparents who came from Madurai, he has chosen to launch his restaurant, Pandan Club, in Chennai. A post on his Instagram profile, which has 1,29,000 followers, announcing openings for kitchen personnel resulted in a storm of resumes: many from fans and amateur cooks.

Explaining why he is insisting on a seasoned team for the restaurant, scheduled to open in August, Sashi says the fine dining space will serve Peranakan cuisine with cocktails. “The Peranakans are Chinese who adopted Malay culture, so there is a strong Malaysian influence in their cooking,” says Sashi, adding, “There is a significant difference in the way they use ingredients — a lot of fermented soy beans, fermented black beans and buah keluak, poisonous in its original form, but used as a spice when cured.” The food, which requires skill and patience to make, he says, has a “strong umami flavour, and is also very earthy”.

Despite the unfamiliar flavours, Sashi is confident that the Indian palate will appreciate the cuisine’s familiar spices and the chillies.

Although growing up, Sashi’s only exposure to India was a “temple tour with family at the age of six,” he grew up eating Singapore-influenced Indian food, including his mother’s lamb biryani, made with traditional spices, as well as lemongrass and pandan leaves.

Working for Singapore Police’s STAR (Special Tactics and Rescue), he relocated to Australia with his family in 2011, where he worked with the Justice Department in Melbourne.