Aba A. Luke

At 21, you'd nev­er guess where Ab­hay Nair works. His tal­ent blos­soms dai­ly in the kitchen at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel in Port-of-Spain–and that tal­ent is tak­ing him places. Work­ing at the ritzy ho­tel, with the Hy­att's ex­ec­u­tive chefs at his side, fu­els his thirst to be the best. En­tered in­to the T&T Ho­tels, Restau­rants and Tourism As­so­ci­a­tion's culi­nary com­pe­ti­tion ear­li­er this year by an ex­ec­u­tive chef who saw his tal­ent, Ab­hay walked away with the ho­n­our of be­ing the 2010 Ju­nior Chef of the year. His tri­umph has earned him a place, along with a team of chefs from kitchens across T&T, to take part in the pres­ti­gious Taste of the Caribbean, a re­gion­al culi­nary com­pe­ti­tion, in June. Dressed in his crisp chef's uni­form, Nair's pride shone through­out his in­ter­view. He was ea­ger to talk about his hum­ble be­gin­nings and his fu­ture plans for food and the lo­cal culi­nary in­dus­try.

The Ch­agua­nas na­tive, who comes from a fam­i­ly of doc­tors, lawyers and en­gi­neers, ex­plained it was im­por­tant for him to ful­fill the ex­pec­ta­tions of his par­ents. For that rea­son, he stud­ied the sci­ences while at­tend­ing Cou­va Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School, where he ex­celled. He de­vel­oped a fas­ci­na­tion, from an ear­ly age, with the art of cook­ing, and it nev­er left him. "When I was younger, I watched a show where a chef took a sim­ple thing as a raw car­rot and turned it in­to a but­ter­fly," he said. "Just the fact that you can take any­thing and give it to some­one, and change their day, giv­ing them a dif­fer­ent out­look on an ex­pe­ri­ence, is some­thing great." His love for the culi­nary arts led to his stud­ies at the T&T Tourism and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty In­sti­tute. "There, I learnt the ba­sics, but when I came to Hy­att, my eyes were opened to oth­er great things."

Room to grow

As a ju­nior chef at Hy­att, Nair is in­struct­ed by an ex­ec­u­tive chef. "I do what­ev­er my boss re­quires of me and I ex­e­cute to the best of my abil­i­ty," he said. "For me, cook­ing was nev­er about fill­ing some­one's bel­ly. It was more about the ex­pe­ri­ence I could of­fer." He said he is thrilled to be a part of the Hy­att fam­i­ly, es­pe­cial­ly as he al­ways want­ed to work with a com­pa­ny that would af­ford him the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­com­plish his goals. "The Hy­att be­came the first job where I felt se­cure and very hap­py and want­ed to con­tin­ue work­ing rather that just hav­ing a job and then mov­ing on."

Per­fect­ing his art

When it comes to prepar­ing food, this young man has a re­al zeal to per­fect the art. "I try to cre­ate some­thing new in the kitchen every day. I take it to the se­nior chefs, who of­fer cri­tique. That's how I grow." With a laugh, Nair ad­mit­ted that his mon­ey is spent on new cook­books and oth­er ma­te­ri­als that would aid in his de­vel­op­ment. "I have a con­cept that I'm try­ing to per­fect right now. I'm us­ing tra­di­tion­al Caribbean food and putting a con­tem­po­rary twist to it. I re­cent­ly made a callaloo sal­ad. I used ba­by spinach, co­conut jel­ly, pump­kin seeds and pi­men­to crisps... it was nice," he said, with a con­fi­dent smile.

"You can get so many dif­fer­ent things from one food item, whether a fruit or veg­etable. I like to take it apart and use each el­e­ment to cre­ate some­thing great." With so much to look for­ward to, and a win­dow of op­por­tu­ni­ty that of­fers cre­ative free­dom, Nair feels his op­tions are lim­it­less. With that in mind, he said, "I in­tend to be the best and I know that to be the best, I must give the best."