Finding your passion...

Changing fields helped cook recipe for success

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai: Two decades ago, 21-year-old Moshe Shek, a Byculla boy with a BSc in biochemistry from St Xavier’s College, a passion for photography and a stint in a flying school, found himself confused about where his life was heading. So Moshe, a fourth-generation Jewish settler in Mumbai, took a year off and went to a kibbutz (community) in Israel.
“Life on the kibbutz was like living with one huge family. There was no system of money. We worked in the fields and grew the food we ate,’’ says Moshe. He split his time between cultivating avocados and learning Hebrew. But when the bitter winter chill came, Moshe, who grew up in Mumbai’s heat and dust, begged for a change of job. He was put in the kitchen “with six old crabby women’’ where nobody expected him to last. But it was there that Moshe had his eureka moment. He fell in love with food and decided to become a chef. “I loved the atmosphere in the kitchen, the warmth, the people and the handling of food,’’ says Moshe. When Moshe announced his ambitions, he was looked down upon. “You want to be a cook?’’ was the incredulous refrain. Moshe did a hotel and food course at Sophia Polytechnic, Breach Candy. “The faculty was impressed with my experience, and allowed me to directly join the second year of a two-year course,’’ says Moshe.
The course was intense and gave him the grounding required for the field. According to Moshe, what you get out of a course depends on what you put into it. “If you put in a lot of research, you’ll have more queries to ask in class, which in turn will help you go into greater depth while understanding the profession,’’ he adds.
After the course, he did a stint at the Taj in Mumbai, where he earned a princely sum of Rs 1,600 a month. There were also two years of workstudy in London and a scholarship in Switzerland. He returned to Mumbai to cater from a “hole in the wall in Byculla’’. He slogged 14 hours a day and rarely saw much money. He shopped for vegetables in the wee hours, prepared meals, delivered dabbas, waited outside homes and offices for clients to finish meals, collected empty tiffins and went back to wash them.
In two years he had 700 clients, but he missed Israel and returned there. But after four years at the Hilton in Israel, he grew restless again. “Israel wasn’t home for me. I felt like a foreigner. Mumbai was where I belonged.’’
He returned to the city, set up the now-shut Athena, Mumbai’s first night club, Basilico, a popular Italian joint, and in 2003 Moshe Oliva in Delhi. He also opened the Moshe’s restaurant at Cuffe Parade, followed by similar outlets across South Mumbai. Madonna, Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer have all grabbed a bite at Moshe’s while in the city.
While his name now rolls off the tongues of Mumbai’s elite, Moshe is himself reminded of his gruelling journey to build a name from scratch. And he’s willing to help strugglers. “I’ve promoted dishwashers to assistant managers and cleaners to supervisors,’’ he says.

FEEDING AMBITION: After doing a BSc in biochemistry, Moshe Shek studied hotel management and built a successful career.