From kitchens at the Taj and Indian Accent to Executive Chef of a two-country coastal Indian concept, Gaurav Gupta’s career is a reminder of how far Indian culinary training can travel.
Ten years ago, Gaurav Gupta was working the pass at some of India’s most demanding hotel kitchens the Taj Group, The Leela, The Chancery Pavilion the kind of postings Indian hospitality graduates know as a rite of passage. Today, he runs the kitchen at JHOL Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian outpost of a Michelin Guide-listed Bangkok restaurant, across a three-concept property that spans a coastal Indian tasting menu, an à la carte dining room, a cocktail bar and a shisha lounge.
His path there was consistent rather than fast. After a Bachelor’s in Culinary Arts from the Welcome group School of Hotel Administration in Manipal, Gupta spent his early years absorbing India’s hotel kitchen culture before a stint at Indian Accent in New Delhi, working under chef Manish Mehrotra, reshaped how he thought about regional Indian food. “People often think great cooking is about creativity alone,” he says. “In reality, creativity comes after you’ve mastered the fundamentals.”
That grounding took him to Bangkok, where he spent close to a decade working alongside chef Hari Nayak, first helping open the original JHOL, then moving through Michelin-recognised kitchens including Haoma, where he was part of the team that earned the restaurant its first Michelin Star and a Michelin Green Star for sustainability, with further training stints at Blue by Alain Ducasse, MIA and Sri Trat. By the time JHOL opened its Kuala Lumpur outpost in mid-2025 under Clifftop Group Asia, Gupta was the natural choice to lead the kitchen.
The Kuala Lumpur restaurant asks more of him than Bangkok did. Set inside The Met, Mont Kiara, JHOL KL runs a tasting menu alongside an à la carte programme, and shares its footprint with Chola, a gin-and-tonic-led cocktail bar, and Mintsha, a shisha lounge meaning Gupta’s kitchen now feeds three distinct guest experiences under one roof. The menu itself maps India’s coastline, moving through Gujarat’s sweet-and-sour profiles, Tamil Nadu’s Chettinad spicing, and Kerala’s seafood traditions, anchored by dishes like the Masala Muska Bun, served with pav bhaji and curry leaf butters, and a stuffed Odisha-style fried chicken wing finished with a squeeze of calamansi.
For Indian hospitality graduates watching from home, Gupta’s trajectory is a useful data point: a Manipal-trained chef, shaped by Taj and Indian Accent kitchens, is now setting culinary direction for one of Southeast Asia’s most closely watched Indian restaurant launches. “Every region in India has a unique culinary identity,” he says. “My goal is to understand those traditions directly and reinterpret them thoughtfully for today’s diners.”
Gupta is currently preparing for a research trip across Goa, Coorg, Madurai, Kerala and Kolkata this summer, studying coastal cooking techniques that will shape JHOL’s next seasonal menu, a reminder that for this Executive Chef, the kitchen’s next chapter still begins in India.
