After judging Masterchef India and hosting TV shows Breakfast Xpress and Food Tripping , chef Ranveer Brar, 37, next plans to take social media by storm.
On Thursday, Brar will become the first Indian chef to premiere a web show on Twitter, #RanveerOnTheRoad . The show will feature short videos of his discovery of Australian food and its culinary legacy.
Brar will tweet the show’s three-minute episodes twice a week to his 346k followers. He is looking forward to answering his followers’ queries and sharing his experience of making the dishes. “I will be [online for] half and hour after the episode is launched with behind-the-scenes stories and information on the destination and people.”
With online video consumption in India rising by 400 per cent a year and ‘food’ being mentioned 370,000 times a year, it’s no surprise that food was the first choice for a Twitter series.
The micro-blogging website has adopted food shows, like #Cookalong in the U.S., that feature emerging food talent. Recently, Euro 2016 had Twitter working with Michelin-starred chefs to create video recipes based on football matches.
Brar says his show will not feature hard-to-replicate dishes and close-ups of food. “Viewers can expect a lot of food conversations, intense food and wine stories and trends,” he says, “[And] extensive study of Australian food, from the native Australian times to the modern Australian outlook on cooking. And most of all, the human stories behind the food.”
Brar created #RanveerOnTheRoad during an earlier trip to Australia to give his followers “instantaneous and spur-of-the-moment conversations.” Now the hashtag has evolved into a web series.
Brar says, he was struck by the Aussies’ “sincerity towards the farm-to-table concept, the looking inward nature towards native food and the love for cooking.”
The immediacy that social media allows has helped Brar offline too.
As executive chef at TAG Café at Kamala Mills and the Juhu Patisserie English Vinglish, Brar monitors customer feedback online to perk up his dishes. “For me audience feedback is everything, I constantly monitor feedback to ensure that the audience knows it is being heard. Also, most of my menu changes are done with focus groups comprising my audiences.”
Brar works with two Boston restaurants, Indian DaVinci and Soul of India, and is also looking to open more outlets in North America.
Mumbaikars can also look forward to his menu at Flyp@MTV, a nightspot which will be opening in the city soon after its successful launch in Delhi.
#RanveerOnTheRoad’s Season 1 will last 15 weeks. In upcming seasons, Brar will visit Turkey and Mauritius.
Will the two new destinations impact Brar and his cooking? Wait and watch!
Follow @ranveerbrar on Twitter. Episodes of #RanveerOnTheRoad will be tweeted on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 11 a.m. from July 21
The author is a freelance writer
