Ranveer Brar reveals how he juggles cooking, acting, and poetry

Ranveer Brar—a celebrity chef, actor, poet, photographer, reality show judge, a YouTube creator with millions of true-blue followers—enjoys a pop-culture ubiquity that comes from steadier, solid footing and a sorted “flow where the river takes you” persona. The last aspect might seem trite to some because in our dystopian, ads infested attention economy—which one of us is not anxious, scattered, and taking it easy? ”While we are surrounded by hacks and formulas and tactics and strategies, you know, there is a certain value to just being,” Brar says when I ask him about the self-consciousness that has inevitably crept in the work of up-and-coming creatives due to the casual, but relentless scrutiny of smartphones.

When we get on a Zoom call, Brar is exhausted, and jet-lagged from his flight from Dubai, but forthcoming and articulate, as he divulges details about Kashkan 2, the second branch of his restaurant, Kashkan by Ranveer Brar, in Dubai. “So we were supposed to open the first week of August, then mid-August, then the end of August, then the first week of September, and now it’s mid September, but we should be good to go,” Brar puckishly contextualised why a chef should never divulge the opening date of the restaurant, making me feel foolish for blandly asking if the “process was going fine”.

A “notoriously social” kid, born into a Jat Sikh family in Lucknow, Brar has spoken extensively about his early influences: His grandmother and his Gurudwara. With the former, when prodded to answer about the (lack of) legitimacy Indian grandmothers are bestowed for shaping Indian cuisine, he speaks about patriarchy being imposed on a setting that is inherently matriarchal in its operations. “As a child, the first symbol of that matriarchy is your grandmother, and the house she’s running, not just the kitchen. The culture of the house and everybody else is just, without being emphatic about it, a part of this opera,” Brar says.

From the interactions with his grandmother, and from being a part of their Langar—the Sikh communal practice of serving free meals to everyone irrespective of background—and seamlessly blending into its kitchen, he learnt how to “catch” essential anecdotes about food culture. “I think the bigger conversation for me is there is stuff that is being taught and there is stuff that is being caught. When you are having meandering conversations, you catch, right? But what you catch stays for longer and it becomes a deeper part of you,” says Brar, adding, “I always say we start from a Caught world, we move to a Taught world.”

Tempering the dish

In his twenties, Brar became one of the youngest executive chefs in the country, and worked with the Taj group, Radisson group, and then migrated to the US and opened Banq, a Franco-Asian restaurant that was well received.

Brar straddles multiple talents and platforms—he has a presence on television, YouTube, Instagram, cinema and OTT, a celebrity stint on Masterchef India and acting portfolio that includes his most recent 2024 film Buckingham Murders where he co-starred with Kareena Kapoor Khan. I wonder about this sense of ease, of moving and assuming the shape of whatever he wants to be a part of. “Once you spend enough time behind the camera, you learn to understand it and then make it invisible. So it’s not that I don’t know that a camera is rolling. I will know the focal length of the lens, and I’ll also know the aperture, and if need be, I’ll go behind the camera and see the settings. But then, that’s a mental map you create and then you forget it,” Brar says. Measured, technical, almost enviously, frustratingly sorted, how has the chef managed to evade the demands of an industry that boxes its creatives into finding a ‘brand’?

Despite the ubiquity of his presence, Brar is insistent that his drive is a symptom of restlessness, his “ADHD, fidgety, hyperactive ‘need a multi-compartmentalised brain’”, and not ambition. “It is not about achievement, there is no agenda to it,” he adds, also calling himself a “forgivist” instead of a perfectionist, someone who is able to make peace with his supposed inadequacies. His foray into fiction came with Modern Love: Mumbai (2022), where he played a gay man whose lover was trying to come out to his grandmother. Prior to that, Brar was approached by at least three filmmakers from South Indian film industries to portray a villain. “Ranveer, your face has some unapproachability and mystery that becomes pronounced when you are on camera,” casting director Mukesh Chhabra had apparently told the chef in the past. “If you watch Buckingham Murders, he is not the happiest or the most romantic guy around, right?” Brar laughs.

What is next on the horizon? His poetry book, for one. He has read some of his poetry out for The Lallantop—a digital Hindi media channel—in the past, when he sat for an interview with journalist Saurabh Dwivedi. Brar is also a photographer and ambassador for Leica cameras in India, and is working on materialising that talent into something more visible for the audience. And then of course another Kashkan in Dubai. “I can be more stable, but my ADHD won’t allow that,” Brar concludes.

Quick Bites

Who is your favourite chef of all time?
Sanjeev Kapoor.

A food film/TV show you can watch on repeat?
Babette’s Feast (1987).

Drop a trivia about Lucknowi food.
There is no such thing as Lucknowi food. The boundaries of the city and its culture were drawn by the British.

Your favourite Ranveer Brar recipe?
Nali Nihari.

What is your most controversial food take?
There is no such thing as Lucknowi or Calcutta Biryani.

A food trend you abhor?
All these “airs” and “foams”.

YouTube, OTT, or cinema?
Cinema.

Photographer: Agnidhra Ray; Hair and Makeup Artist: Ashish Gurav. 

This article first appeared in Cosmopolitan India's September-October 2025 print edition.

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