Rishim Sachdeva
Rishim Sachdeva
After years spent in modern European kitchens, in 2019 Rishim Sachdeva decided to start cooking plant-based food – and he hasn’t looked back since.
The past ten years has seen the vegan diet move from the fringes of the culinary world into the spotlight. While many chefs have had to adapt their menus to accommodate this meteoric rise in the popularity of plant-based dining, not many have transformed their style of cookery more than Rishim Sachdeva. Having worked in some of the most highly regarded kitchens in the UK and India, he came up with the idea of Tendril — an (almost) entirely vegan restaurant concept, which has been making waves since its launch in 2019.
For many, becoming a chef is something which people fall into almost by accident at first, but for Rishim it was always the plan, even as a young boy growing up in India. ‘I come from a family where food was a very central part of any get-togethers,’ he explains. ‘Mealtimes were always very elaborate, so I would help my mum in the kitchen even when I was only ten years old and by the age of twelve, I was making full-blown meals. I always knew that this is what I wanted to do so I didn’t really even bother looking at anything else.’
Motivated by the UK’s exciting food scene and determined to ultimately work in some of London’s most renowned kitchens, Rishim left India to study hospitality and tourism management at Oxford Brookes University. After working as a pot washer throughout his time at university to get a glimpse of the inner workings of a professional kitchen, he started looking for jobs in London: ‘I wanted to work somewhere that would open doors for me. I had a very basic understanding of what a Michelin-starred restaurant would be like and I knew the food would be a different level to what I’d seen before, but I had no idea what to expect in the kitchen.’
Within a few months of graduating, Rishim was offered a position at Marco Pierre White’s The Oak Room, where he started once again as a potwash before working his way up to chef de partie. It was here that he first began to learn the techniques central to classic French cookery. ‘I come from India but I’ve never trained in Indian cuisine,’ says Rishim. ‘The maximum I can do is knock up a curry at home but I can’t put a curry in front of people and expect them to pay for it, as it’s something I’ve never really cooked. When I came over here, I wanted to understand the things at the core of cooking – French techniques, like making basic sauces. The Oak Room really helped me with that.’
After a brief stint working at the Virgin Atlantic Clubhouse, which is where Rishim says he learnt more about the business side of running a kitchen (‘That part of my career really taught me how to break a dish down and how to make money on a shoestring budget’), he started applying to restaurants again, making The Fat Duck his main aim. After numerous applications and much persistence, he was finally offered a position at Heston Blumenthal’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant, where he worked his way all the way up to junior sous chef. ‘I just have that kind of attitude where if I want something, I will absolutely give it my best shot and I’ll keep making myself better to get there,’ explains Rishim.
Following on from The Fat Duck, he went on to work at Islington’s Almeida where he met chef Robin Gill, who eventually asked Rishim to help him with the opening of The Dairy. This proved to be an inspiring time for the young chef, as he explains: ‘There was so much excitement when working with Robin. He was always happy and everyone fed off that energy. That really stayed with me, the fact that if you’re starting something new, you have to be excited like a child.’ It was while working under Nuno Mendes at Chiltern Firehouse, however, that Rishim saw up-close how much planning goes into the running of a top restaurant. ‘I learnt how important consistency is,’ he says. ‘You could be churning out 400 covers a night but the first dish has to be exactly the same as the last. It was intense but I still think it’s amazing what we were able to achieve given the numbers.’
Having spent his whole young career in London, Rishim then made the decision to return to India after being offered the role of executive chef at Mumbai’s much-esteemed Olive Bar and Kitchen — a position he held for over four years. This gave him a chance to cook professionally in India for the first time and allowed him to see first-hand the importance of seasonality in cooking. ‘It was very produce-driven because we’d just try and get our hands on whatever was good and in season,’ explains Rishim. ‘The seasons are really short in India, particularly for things like tomatoes. It’s not like in the UK where you have multiple suppliers you can go to. I remember trying to source apricots in India once and it just took an insane amount of phone calls to get hold of them.’
The biggest turning point in Rishim’s career, however, came in 2019. He had returned to London the previous year after getting married, and decided to take part in Veganuary having cooked and eaten meat his entire life. ‘I wanted to challenge myself as a chef so I just thought I’d try it and see how it goes,’ he explains, ‘Cooking meat is technical — there’s no denying that – but finding the star in a vegetarian dish is a real challenge. You have to put a lot of thought behind it and find ways of creating texture. Using fake or mock meats, for example, is something that never resonated with me; there’s a better way of creating dishes on a menu than just trying to replicate something when it often doesn’t even taste like the original.’
With this ethos is mind, Rishim launched Tendril in 2019 as a series of pop-ups, with the idea being to serve an almost entirely vegan menu (dairy products are used in a few dishes) that isn’t bound by one nationality. After popping up for a few months in Bethnal Green, Tendril was set to begin a residency at popular Soho pub The Sun and 13 Cantons in March 2020 but COVID intervened. Managing just ten weeks of service between the two national lockdowns, the restaurant finally reopened in May 2021 and proved an instant hit amongst Londoners.
Tendril sees all of Rishim’s various experiences come together to create a unique restaurant, with everything from the importance placed on seasonality that he witnessed in India to the French techniques he first learnt at The Oak Room on show. As to the future, there are plans afoot to find a permanent site for Tendril but as to where and when this will be, we’ll have to wait and see. One thing that you can be sure of with Rishim however, is that he will do everything he possibly can to make it a success.
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