New Delhi, May 23 -- Split chins.Cut fingers. Toxic boardrooms. Idyllic days on the Mediterranean. Who would guess we are talking not about the latest potboiler, but chef Rahul Akerkar's memoir, Biting Off More Than I Can Chew. This isn't your typical cooking career story-it focuses on the choices he made, like leaving a PhD in biochemistry, opening Mumbai's most talked-about restaurant in the 1990s, and then stepping away in 2015 when he realised his investors weren't respecting his business principles, and the ups and downs that followed.

These days, Akerkar, 65, helms the restaurants Ode and Waarsa as the creative and culinary director for Aditya Birla New Age Hospitality. Most recently, for the group, he opened Flint, an all-day rest...