Jiggs Kalra: He fed his curiosity & stirred India's culinary melting pot

Jiggs will be remembered as a man who bridged the gap between five-star hotels and street food

No figure influenced Indian food in the 1980s and early 1990s more than Jiggs Kalra. The most unusual part of it was that he was never a chef and yet he, more than anybody else, helped make chefs the stars they are today.

Kalra started out life as a journalist on Khushwant Singh’s Illustrated Weekly, the top magazine of the day, but soon found that his passion for food overcame everything else. He started reviewing restaurants for the old Evening News in a column called ‘Platter Chatter’, one of the only such columns at the time. 

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