Chess grandmaster’s menu: What Chef Suresh Pillai cooked for Viswanathan Anand, Gukesh
Celebrity Chef Suresh Pillai, who once aspired to be a chess player, prepared a special dinner for grandmasters Viswanathan Anand and Gukesh Dommaraju. The event served as a personal milestone for the chef, who maintains a lifelong passion for the game of chess.
Why it matters
It provides a human-interest look at the intersection of professional culinary arts and elite sports culture in India.
When he was a schoolgoer in Kerala, former Masterchef BBC contestant and celebrity Chef Suresh Pillai pawned his mother’s gold earrings for ₹300 to take part in a chess tournament in Kollam. “The experience was overwhelming. I lost in the first round. I went to the bathroom and cried because there was no way to make back the ₹300,” says Chef Suresh.
He may have traded a chessboard for a cutting board and knife as the game required capital and a coach: both of which he did not possess back in the day. But one thing has remained unchanged : Suresh’s love for the game. Between busy service hours, particularly when he was working in the Michelin-star restaurants of London, he would always find time to log onto chess.com (a free online portal to play people and bots based on ranking) for a quick game.
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