MUMBAI, April 5 -- More than two decades ago, when Rahul Akerkar's celebrated restaurant Indigo was the toast of Mumbai's gourmands, cartoonist Hemant Morparia immortalised the moment with a wry sketch for a city newspaper. The frame shows a throng gathered outside the restaurant-"reviewers angling for a spot," hoping, perhaps, for a complimentary meal-while a portly chef waves them off, declaring, "I don't want a review; I want an editorial." The satire was less a jab at a celebrity chef's supposed arrogance and more an affectionate nod to his insouciance. Morparia's frame now adorns a wall in Akerkar's home -a fitting reminder of an era, and a mellowness, that defined Mumbai's diners. Indigo in Colaba was synonymous with modern European fine dining with an Indian spin, bearing the stamp of architect Bijoy Jain, notably by its striking blue wall, from which it drew its name. Behind it all was Akerkar, whose journey into the culinary world was unconventional. While pursuing chemical engineering at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he found himself apprenticing in various restaurant kitchens - "mostly Mexican and Italian as a line chef" -- and bars. This hands-on tutorial continued alongside his master's in biochemical engineering at Columbia University. He eventually poured his experiences into restauranteering - starting out first with Under the Over at Kemps Corner, followed by helping late Odissi dancer Protima Bedi set up Kuteeram opposite Nityagram dance village, outside of Bengaluru, and then returning to Mumbai to set up Indigo in 1999. These moments - shaped by risk, instinct and lived experience - come together in his memoir, 'Biting off more than I can chew'. What started as a cookbook "during our Indigo days" transformed into a memoir, during the pandemic. "Everything stopped, and for the first time, there was stillness. I had time to reflect - on life, on my work, on where I was," says Akerkar, 68, who had just launched Qualia, a fine dining restaurant in Lower Parel, only to be thrown into a vortex of uncertainty and financial pressure. In that period - "when everyone was perfecting sourdough bread" - he started recording conversations with his friend and New York Times columnist and writer Perry Garfinkel, who helped shape the initial draft. A no-holds-barred manuscript was subsequently tempered under a legal team's watch and stories involving government authorities or industry conflicts were trimmed. "The advice was clear: if you want work in this industry, some things have to go," he says. But despite that deliberate curation, what unfolds is a story of accident, instinct and a career built less on design and more on momentum. "I just fell into it," he says - unlike many chefs who trace their early inspirations to their mothers' or grandmothers' kitchens or the aromas wafting through local streets. "My mom was never a good cook," he says plainly. Instead, it was his paternal grandmother who left the deeper imprint - not through technique, but emotion. Meals at ajji's home during holidays in Nashik, and later Sunday lunches in Bandra, the endless snacks - "ladoos, chaklis and chivdas" - "opened my eyes to the joy of food". "That warmth and joy shaped how I feel about food." His mother's side of the family brought an entirely different kind of influence- his German-Jewish grandmother, whose table featured steak tartare and pickled herring, offered an early lesson in abundance and eating without boundaries. "I grew up eating everything," Therefore, his signature dishes and heritage recipes have found a place in the memoir, not interrupting the story telling but as a hat-tip to a generous inheritance. That unstructured path became his culinary capital combined with practical education at American restaurants, repeating motions and building muscle memory. "For years, I didn't feel comfortable calling myself a chef. I always felt less than," he says. "It took me a long time to get past that." When he returned to India, exiting his PhD programme - "as I fell out with my advisor" -and opened his first restaurant Under The Over in 1992, in Kemps Corner, there was no grand vision, only a willingness to figure things out as he went along. Looking back, he attributes much of his early success not to confidence, but to naivete. "You don't fully think through the ramifications," he says. "And maybe that's a good thing. I stuck to authentic cuisine because I lacked the confidence." Fusion came later, naturally, "as I became more comfortable and started thinking creatively about flavours. My imagination was once fired by my aunt's panchamrut". If he tested waters with Under the Over and Kuteeram, which also served western food with a team managing a tandoor on the side, Indigo was a declaration. Set up with a loan of Rs.5 crore, it opened at a time when Mumbai's fine dining landscape was largely confined to "stuffy" five-star hotels. "This offered something different-refined but relaxed, polished but unpretentious." "It was everything that made restauranting right," says Akerkar. "The service was warm but never overbearing. The food was consistent. The attention to detail-in the plating, wine, and interiors-was relentless." Even high-profile guests were treated like everyone else. Once when then UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who had dropped by for dinner, asked the manager why his food was delayed, he was simply told that the kitchen was backed up and that his meal would be served momentarily. "That's how it works," he says. "You come in, you eat, you pay, you leave." Turning away from Indigo in 2018 eventually was as much a test of courage as building it was. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done," he says. "But in hindsight, I should have done it sooner." The restaurant had become synonymous with his identity. But behind the scenes, "things had turned toxic with my partners". He wasn't ready to hang up the chef's cap though. Ode, a Mediterranean restaurant at Lower Parel, was launched three years ago and Flint, "cuisine agnostic space with a backbone of charcoal fire cooking" was launched within the NCPA complex recently, while Waarsa, an Awadhi restaurant, was opened a couple of years ago. Unimpressed by trends - "who needs the drama" - he says the secret sauce to the success of a restaurant is to "get the basics right". "At the end of the day, people want honesty on the plate; food that is not trying too hard but just well-made, thoughtful dishes that respect ingredients and intention," he says. Such as chef, restaurateur and writer Alice Waters's iconic restaurant in Berkeley, California, Chez Panisse, he points out. "She has been doing a different menu every day for the last 40 years, keeping it simple; and people love it. Like our own Thakkar's Bhojanalaya that has been doing great simple food without forcing anything on its patrons with so much care," he says. In the same breath, he acknowledges, much has changed and food must be instagrammable. So when Ode opened, "people had to physically keep me away from all the noise, with everyone sharing, taking pictures and making a fuss around the table". As we wrap up the chat, a patron who is also a friend walks up to Akerkar to say her group could not get a table at Flint, so they drove to Ode. "Music to my ears," said the chef....