With a whopping 1100 recipes and over 300 videos to simplify cooking for aspiring cooks and experts, the Ranveer Brar app aims to give you access to the chef’s culinary knowledge throughout the day. People with allergies or those who follow specific diets can opt for the recipes featured in the Food Mat section of ‘Lactose Free’, ‘Gluten free’, ‘Nut Free’, and ‘Healthy Food’.

The RB app is also associated with Amazon Alexa’s Cooking Skill wherein you get access to 250 of the chef’s popular recipes with an exclusive ‘Cooking Tip Of The Day’. The cooking skill offers the user assistance throughout the food-making process giving a step by step breakdown of the dishes and can even rewind if you’ve missed out on something.

This app is further proof of how technology has seeped into every industry and has made the world a smaller place. Not only does the app grant access to a top chef’s repertoire of recipes but it also ensures that users maintain their health by giving regular reminders.

In an exclusive conversation with MW, Brar speaks about food, the change in the hospitality industry and how technology has brought people closer.

What’s your favourite aspect of the app?

My favourite aspect of the app is the fact that it’s linked with Alexa. You can listen to the recipes, feel inspired and if you miss out something, you can look it up on the app. The second part is the RB’s diet which is purely an experiential diet that I believe in. My experience of looking at food purely from the aspect of nourishment has worked.

How did the idea for the app come into your mind?

Actually, it came into my mind when my three-year-old son started using the mobile phone when he was two like it was no big deal. He started talking to Siri and Alexa and to us less. You might call it a father’s insecurity but I just want to be present where he is present, you know? That made me realise that if you have something to say, you have to be present where people are present.

How are apps and technology driving the hospitality industry?

I think they are driving every industry. We live in a world of information – I always say that from being a wisdom driven civilisation and the wise men were there followed by the informed men. Now, there’s so much information that even the informed men aren’t enough. The only wisdom that is left today is the wisdom to reject information. That’s essentially the bigger guiding principle.

How have you seen the hospitality industry change in the past 10 years?

I think everything has changed from the average age in the kitchen to demand and supply ratio of chefs have changed. Earlier we had 40 hotels and 140 chefs and now we have 4000 hotels and restaurants and one lakh chefs so it’s amazing how the ratio has kind of kept itself but the relationship to food has changed. Earlier it was eating in, then it was eating out and now it’s about ordering in.

One food trend you wish we left behind in 2018?

I think we already have but people still dabble in molecular – it’s done and dusted and now we need to forget about it.

One food trend that you foresee this year?

Grains. Indian grains and indigenous grains.

What is the one dish you would judge a chef by?

I always say that a person who can make a simple dal tadka and a sookhi aloo ki sabji – jeera aloo – is a good chef. It’s easy to put in a lot of ingredients and confuse people but it’s very difficult to cook simple stuff.

One dish you can eat at any time?

Khichdi.

What are the three things that would comprise your last meal on Earth?

It has to have ghee in it. It has to have grain in it. I’d rather have a good grain porridge with the grain, the ghee and just a sprinkle of salt.

Three things in your kitchen you can’t do without?

My sil batta – I always grind my masalas and pastes on a sil batta. Also, a hand blender and my earthenware pot.

The best meal you’ve ever had – when and where?

Attica in Melbourne in November last year.