Chef Vikas Khanna’s Grub Street Diet

Illustration: Margalit Cutler

To his fans, Vikas Khanna is a judge on MasterChef India and the owner of the acclaimed, reservation-scant Bungalow, which opened in the East Village this past March. But in reality, he’s cooked in New York’s kitchens since the early 2000s. Khanna runs Bungalow assiduously, staying up until the middle of the night, every night, to clean up. When he heads to India next month to shoot a new season of MasterChef, it’ll be the longest he’s been away from the restaurant since it opened. For now, though, he remains in New York, working his way through Bungalow’s Thanksgiving menu — he’s still trying to nail down his pomegranate-glazed turkey — and occasionally taking a minute to stop into the new Louis Vuitton store for some chocolate with a side of earrings.

Thursday, November 14
Every single day for the last 20 years, I have had the same breakfast: a bowl of oats with chia seeds and almond milk, unsalted mixed nuts from Costco, and four eggs. Then I have a large coffee with almond milk. I’m a puppy; I eat exactly the same things every single day. My diet is very strange. I don’t eat sugar, salt, or anything spicy. It allows me an enhanced sense of taste.

I eat breakfast at around 10:30, which is later than some, but I usually go to sleep at three in the morning. I always stay until close to get the kitchen cleaned, so I am there until the last guest leaves. I started my first business when I was very young. Cleaning became a ritual for me. I was the owner, so I had to clean everything before I left. Otherwise, I’d get very bad nightmares that I was sitting in the kitchen, and things were falling on me.

As I leave, I go to the deli on 44th and Third Avenue and get the same green juice that I get every day — celery, carrots, and apples. Today, I head to Grand Central Fish Market before heading to the restaurant to work on a scallop dish with a yuzu labneh sauce on the new tasting menu. Every year around this time, when we’d get sick as kids with a sore throat, our mom would give us boiled milk with turmeric. Most children in India had that growing up. I took those two things — something lactose-heavy and turmeric-rich — and said, Let me make a sauce out of that. It’s the usual base sauce, neutral oil, turmeric, ice bath, labneh or Greek yogurt, fresh yuzu juice, sugar, salt. It’s such a glossy sauce. The sauce and scallops are cooked in curry-leaf-infused oil, and they’re topped with roasted black sesame seeds. It took me seven different trials to get to this version of this dish. I add a golden gooseberry salad on the side.

After I go to the fish market, I go to the bakery next to it. I don’t know why, but I get two pecan tarts. They are amazing. I don’t usually eat sugar. It hits me hard when I indulge in it. Regularly eating sugar is hard for chefs because we’re constantly tasting things; those calories really add up.

From there, I take a Citi Bike to work. I do that every day. It’s changed my life. It’s the best, except for the crazy people in East Village, always trying to hit you. Starting at around 4:30, I taste every sauce in the kitchen. I am very serious about tasting everything every night. I need everything to be consistent. I learned to be like this from a chef I worked for many years ago, Henry Meer, at City Hall in Tribeca. He tasted everything, every single day. I just fell in love with it.

I don’t eat anything after that. I always drink one large coffee during service — two espresso shots, one scoop of ice, and then about three to four ounces of milk — because I am the one expediting the food, and I need coffee with 20 runners in my hands.

I eat dinner like I do every night, with my partner Sam. If he’s not there, I don’t eat dinner. I am very specific: I have six ounces of fish, six ounces of chicken, and one piece of bread made from roasted chickpea flour. I won’t eat until the last guest leaves. There’s no time for me to eat during service. The only time I ever would is if a guest doesn’t like something, in which case I’ll taste it in the back of the kitchen to see if there was something wrong with it.

I do have an indulgence that I don’t like to fight at this age. I drink this phalsa sherbet — the Indian name for the fruit is phalsa — that we make at the restaurant. It’s a drink that comes from sherbet berries, a sour, north Indian variety. We make lemonade out of it after we purée them, and the color is released: a dark-pink beetroot. The one we serve has a lot of sugar in it, but I make one with less for myself. It’s nostalgic for me. The berries were only ever sold toward the end of spring back home. When we’d go to our grandparents’ house during summer vacation, my grandmother always had them. They didn’t have a shelf life, and, by evening, we’d have to eat them all. I finish cleaning up and go to bed around 2:30 a.m.

Friday, November 15
I wake up around 10:30 and have my same breakfast: oats with nuts and chia, four eggs, and a large coffee. I post the scallop recipe on my Instagram. (I always try to do my Instagram posting in the morning.)

I go to the gym at New York Sports Club on the 39th and Third and then get my green juice. From there, I ride the Citi Bike down to the Flower District. I know people usually go to the Flower District in the morning, but it’s good to go around 2:30 because they’ll give you a lot of the leftovers. Everybody prefers buying buds so they last longer, but for our pots on the outside of the restaurant, we need flowers that have already blossomed. I carry them on my bike to the restaurant.

During service, I make myself almost 100 percent available to guests, which is a challenge but also the best part. It all comes from extreme darkness. Many years ago, my sister took me to a restaurant. We were huge fans of the chef, but he refused to come out and meet us. The manager said, “If you had ordered the tasting menu, my chef would’ve come out,” which really hurt my sister. She made me promise that I wouldn’t turn out that way, and that’s why I speak to almost 300 people every single night.

Tonight, we have a guest celebrating her 85th birthday. She is about to start chemo the next day. Her kids are with her. The next person at that table — table 204, the one with the picture of my sister above it — is a pregnant woman, here from Princeton, New Jersey. She tells me her baby is “so happy” after she eats.

Saturday, November 16
I wake up, have my regular breakfast, go to the gym, and bike to the restaurant. I am eager to get there because Mysha, my partner’s daughter, works there on Saturdays.

Mysha is 16. She has Down syndrome. When she is at the restaurant, my entire heart shifts. Over the summer, she would come every day of the week, but since the school year started, she only comes in on Saturdays. She used to be very shy, but now she’s the most popular girl at the restaurant. All the guests know her. Some people know she works on Saturdays and bring her gifts. Today, she helps me put out flowers outside. Mysha always tries to make her week sound extra interesting to me, so she makes up these big stories about what happened in school. She talks to me about her dream of opening a doughnut shop together when she grows up. “It’s going to have lots of cats and dogs in it,” she informs me. “Okay, we’ll take it as it comes,” I tell her.

When service starts, she helps with the dessert counter. She makes a mango dessert. At 6:30, we go to say hello to all the guests, and she tells them, “Happy Saturday.” Her favorite dish is lamb chops, and whenever someone orders them, she becomes a terrible waiter. One time, her brother was dining in the restaurant and ordered them; when I asked if she could take the dish to his table, she said, matter-of-factly, “No.”

We make an Instagram Reel; she tells me what to do. After we say hello to everyone, she says good-bye and hugs me twice before she goes — one for me and another for my sister. When she leaves, the restaurant goes back to being a business; when she’s there, it feels like a temple.

Sunday, November 17
I eat my same breakfast, go to the gym, and then the same juice. Everybody at the deli recognizes me because I’m that stupid New Yorker who eats exactly the same thing every day, so they don’t even have to ask for my order.

When I get to the restaurant in the afternoon and it’s time to taste all the sauces, I decide that for every spoonful, I’ll also add another spoonful to a bowl to track how much sauce I consume in a day. I am working on a Thanksgiving recipe that I am not happy with yet. It’s a tandoori turkey. We are using a brine that is made out of pomegranate molasses, which also works as a tenderizer. I need to do something different from the traditional Martha Stewart turkey, and I also need it to reflect a part of my culture. For the glaze, I melt an Indian cheese, add fresh pomegranate juice to it, and reduce it. When I do trials, I do three to four versions of everything. I take over all the counters. Then there are permutations of those combinations — some have a salad, some have some other garnish on top. If I had to deal with a chef like myself in the kitchen, constantly trying to rediscover dishes 24 hours a day, I’d be so pissed off.

I get a message from a friend that Sarah Jessica Parker is coming tonight. We have this dessert that I have been working on that looks like a peacock, and it reminds me of that picture of her on the Brooklyn Bridge. I make it for her so she can be the first one to taste it. The passionfruit sauce is still a little too sweet, so we spend the afternoon making a few adjustments.

I had never met her before, but my sister, who passed away in 2022, was a huge fan. She forced me to go through all the episodes of Sex and the City when she was in the hospital. Whenever she would get bad news from the doctors, we’d watch an episode. Plus, The Devil Wears Prada, which I’ve seen a hundred times. My sister was a fashion designer, and she was obsessed with that movie. I know every word. It made her happy.  My sister met Sarah Jessica at New York Fashion Week and always remembered how nice she was. I tell all that to her that night at the restaurant; it’s all very emotional for me, and she’s very courteous.

Monday, November 18
Today is my mom’s birthday. I start and end my days by calling her. All she wants to talk about is Mysha, her first love. I have to send her pictures of Mysha; her doing anything — even just breathing — is enough. I send her flowers from New York. If I sent anything more extravagant, she would say, “You are wasting money.” I don’t want to upset her. Making mom happy is my first rule in life.

The last time I saw my mom was when the New York Times article came out about the restaurant. I kept it a secret, and I went to India to show it to her. She was upset it wasn’t in the local newspaper in our village. I said, “Mom, this is the Times.” She wanted it in the local paper so all our relatives would call her. On our call, she tells me she doesn’t want to come to New York this winter. She hasn’t liked New York since my sister passed away. The last time she came, she felt down. Everything we did reminded her of my sister. She was a bigger-than-life figure, and without her, there’s a lot to miss.

The restaurant is closed today, but I still have my same oats, nuts, and coffee. Monday is my busiest day. There is a lot of maintenance to do at the restaurant. I also do the inventory. There’s a big shoot coming up this week that I have to prepare for. People tell me, “You should just be in bed after you work 16-hour days.” But days like today are important for a restaurant — they help you iron out your purpose.

I eat the same chicken and fish tonight, but earlier. I go over to the new Louis Vuitton store just before it closes and head to the chocolate counter; I don’t know how they do it. I thought I had eaten everything in my life until this. It is a revelation to me that chocolate could be made of this quality. I get one of everything they have. The girl working there, her name is Asia, speaks a chef’s language. The way she talks about percentages! The way they are making chocolate there should be illegal. They are going to put everyone to shame.

I go downstairs to get a surprise for Mysha: new earrings. The store is massive; it’s like an amusement park. It’s all amazing, but I can’t seem to get over the chocolate high.