A home kitchen in Bengaluru that has served over 1000 guests

Six years later, Apartment, a popup he hosts with Jayati Jain, his wife and longtime collaborator, is a well-oiled machine. Anurag, an independent product designer, orchestrates the meal and Jayati, an art director, brings the space to life with her styling and evocative, sculptural flower arrangements. On the night of, chefs Siddarth Sriraj and Aaryan Kapparath help with the prep and plating, and another friend, Kartik Sura, does the table service. The vibe is warm and casual, and it belies the professionalism and skill required to pull it off smoothly. The fridge, for instance, on popup days is converted into a site of military precision—the elements of each dish labelled and placed in order of their appearance in the meal. The timing, the lighting, the music are props in the theatre that is having a fine-dining meal in someone’s living room with twenty-three other guests.

A Seat at the Table

During an Apartment dinner, diners have a clear view across the open kitchen, watching the chefs at work, their food being plated, the aromas reaching the table before the dishes do. This open kitchen was a non-negotiable when Anurag was apartment hunting. At the far end of it, a south-facing window lets in the kind of light that wraps around every surface making the whole space glow in the evening. Echoing the philosophy of the open kitchen, Anurag and Jayati treat the contents in their kitchen as things of beauty that deserve to be seen—open shelves housing their vast condiment selection and an enviable crockery collection, a row of pans hanging above the stove, a magnetic strip holding their well-worn knives. On the side of the fridge are handwritten notes with an inventory of all the condiments and ingredients on the shelves that need using up.

The Beginning of a Menu

For Anurag, inspiration for menus begins life as notes on his phone, as drawings or photographs. “In a way the menus are a culmination of my inspirations over the year.” The notes are fragments that might be a certain combination of colours, a texture, or a vegetable treated in an unexpected way. A shortlist then gets tested on friends and tweaked, with elements sometimes still changing on the night of service. 

Before we know it, it's 8pm and the doorbell starts to ring. Guests walk through the apartment taking in the details—the flame-coloured red hot poker (Kniphofia) perched on various surfaces, a projector throwing a montage of images onto the wall from previous episodes of Apartment: of pasta being rolled out, flowers being prepped, menus being laid out.