Mumbai chefs reveal food experiments that went terribly wrong on Valentine's Day

Four city chefs spill the beans on the culinary exploits that went terribly wrong for them on Valentine's Day

Not so sugary
This happened seven years ago on Valentine’s Day. I was planning to surprise my then girlfriend by cooking her a dish called chicken in milk. It called for the use of salt, but I accidentally ended up adding castor sugar in its place. So when she got home and I pulled the pan out of the oven, instead of a a crisp golden skin, I got a blackened, intensely caramelised chicken. There was no saving it.
- Chef Prateek Sadhu

Shout out loud
In a reversal of roles, my girlfriend (now wife) Malavika decided to cook Malvani chicken for me one Valentine’s Day. It must be noted here that she didn’t really know her way around a kitchen. So, much to her annoyance, her mother kept screaming instructions at her the whole time she was cooking. A shouting match ensued, but, thankfully, it all turned out fine at the end of it.
- Chef Siddharth Kashyap

You’re in the wrong place
I had just returned from London in 2009, and was to spend Valentine’s Day with my wife in Bengaluru, a city I was visiting for only the second time in my life. She asked me to meet her for lunch at a restaurant called Sunny’s on Lavelle Road, but I ended up going to Koshy’s. I didn’t have a local mobile number and it didn’t occur to me to call her from a payphone, so we both ended up waiting for about an hour and then eating by ourselves. When I went over to her house later that night, she was furious and how! But I made up for it by taking her out for a nice dinner.
- Chef Conrad D’Souza

Chaat sweet nothings
My husband Amrut and I started dating in college, so, a few years ago, we decided we should have Valentine’s Day dinner at a restaurant that used to be one of our favourite hangouts. Only when we got there did we see that it was closed for renovation. Obviously, no other restaurant had reservations. Disappointed and wondering what to do, we started walking down one of the lanes near Marine Drive. Suddenly, we saw a chaat stall we used to frequent in our college days. Chaat worth Rs 30 ended up being our romantic Valentine’s Day meal that year.
- Chef Heena Punwani

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