Chef Chet Sharma on Science, Success and the Best Pizza in London
"In the end, the metric you have to measure with is going to be money, but there are all these other things that have to happen first," Bibi chef Chet Sharma tells Observer.
Chet Sharma never intended to become a chef. Although he grew up working in kitchens, including in London’s Michelin-starred Benares and Locanda Locatelli, Sharma had his sights on science. He attended Oxford, where he earned a PhD in physics, but quickly realized that his love of food would yield a better career path. He earned experience in high-end restaurants like Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, The Ledbury and acclaimed San Sebastian eatery Mugaritz before eventually opening his own spot, Bibi, in 2021.
The restaurant, located in Mayfair, reimagines Indian cuisine, drawing on some of Sharma’s childhood favorites as well as more contemporary applications of spices and ingredients from the Indian subcontinent. It’s best experienced as the tasting menu, although à la carte options are available at lunch. Both the dishes and the room itself emphasize the small details, with a friendly sense of service that never feels too overwhelming (the restaurant also notably plays hip-hop over the speakers). It all comes back to Sharma’s upbringing in a Punjabi household, where food and hospitality was prioritized.
“A really nice thing about our culture is that we love to feed people,” he tells Observer, speaking on Bibi’s terrace. “There’s never any imposition. No one minds. Obviously things are different now, but our front door, when we were growing up, was not locked. It was normal for us to have 30 people in the house.”
Over the past two years, Bibi has earned a solid reputation in London, landing at No. 35 on England’s National Restaurant Awards list in 2024. It’s become an important addition to the Indian food scene as well, particularly as the U.K tends to have more casual curry houses than it does Indian fine dining.
“We’ve got a long history of Indian food here because we have a long history with India in the U.K.,” Sharma says. “We have a solid base. And we can only do what we do because of all those restaurants before us. I definitely see it as an evolution of the cuisine, but you can only do it when that base is there.”
Observer spoke with Sharma about shifting from science to food, honoring his late grandmothers and how he defines his success as a chef.
Observer: The menu incorporates dishes inspired by your family and upbringing. Did you always intend for Bibi to have a sense of nostalgia?
Chet Sharma: Yeah. The name means “lady of the house,” and most often it means “grandmother.” We chose the name of the restaurant for a few different reasons. One is, when I think of great cooks and the first people who taught me how to cook and love ingredients, I think of both of my grandmothers. They both grew up on farms in India, so they had this link with produce and the land, which they instilled in me from a very young age. When I think about warm and inviting spaces to eat in, my grandmother’s table is pretty high up on that list. And, finally, if an Indian grandmother came and ate here, hopefully she would recognize the flavors. Of course, we do scallops and halibut and beef, and these things aren’t inherently Indian dishes. But it was important that in doing contemporary, modern dishes, we didn’t lose that connection of what the restaurant is all about.
Did you realize you wanted to cook when you were growing up with your grandmothers?
I knew I loved food. And I loved cooking. But I didn’t know I wanted to be a chef. Honestly, if I had, I wouldn’t have wasted my time becoming a physicist first.
Did studying science help with being a chef?
I think, honestly, why it made a big difference is that it helped me to accelerate my career. I jumped very quickly from being junior to senior in the space of a couple of years, and I don’t think that’s a normal trajectory [for a chef]. And I have to add that I’ve done my yards as a chef. I started a pot washer. I chopped potatoes and green beans. But having on your CV that you’ve got a PhD in physics opens doors in a slightly different way. And I had an approach to food and a studiousness that helped me accelerate, which sounds obvious to say.
It doesn’t necessarily sound obvious because we see a lot of rockstar chefs out there, and people may forget it takes study and work to do it.
If you want longevity, then you do it. The rockstar chefs, they come and go quickly. You can make a massive splash and then two years later, it’s gone. We’ve seen it with so many chefs—and I’m definitely not naming names—over the last 10 or 15 years who look like the next big thing, get carried away by their own hype, forget why they’re being touted as the next big thing and then fizzle away. Because, honestly, talent isn’t enough in this industry. It can get you to certain point. But if you want to build a career and a profession, then you have to have that obsessiveness, as well.
What was the turning point for you where you realized you wanted to commit to being a chef?
I had already been working in restaurants for seven or eight years at that stage because I loved food and wanted to know more about it. But there was a specific moment when I was writing my PhD thesis and I was in the lab late on a Sunday night. My supervisor, by any academic yardstick, was incredibly successful. He was a professor at the age of 43 at the University of Oxford. That’s a pretty big achievement, right? He was great at what he did and he’s still great at what he does. He was also in the lab writing grant applications at the time. I realized, ‘I can’t think of something I want to do less than write a grant application on Sunday night. But I had no problem being in a restaurant on a Sunday night. If I was going to be good at something it should be the thing I was actually obsessed with.
It really never seemed like a career to me until that time, which is crazy to say because I already had my place at Mugaritz. I thought I’d go and do a year there, and live in Spain and learn from this amazing chef. I didn’t actually think I would be a chef in the long run. But while I was there, I really loved being in service. I didn’t really want to do anything else.
It’s important to realize that it’s never too late to change your career.
Absolutely not. And I was in a slight position of privilege, because I was 24 and I already had a PhD behind me. I was secure. If it didn’t work out in Spain, then I could come back and be a researcher. Or I could have gone to work for a bank like all of my friends did, and made way more money than I ever will in this job. I knew I could take that [career] risk. But I also understand why it can be a bit daunting for a lot of people. Whenever I speak to young people now, I always say, ‘Take the risk. Take the chance. If it doesn’t work out. life is long.’ Everyone who tells you life is too short is full of shit. You’ve got time to get things wrong and do it again.
Since Bibi opened, have you found there are certain dishes you can’t take off the menu?
The chicken dish, [which is called] Sharmaji’s Lahori Chicken. We opened in September of 2021 and there’s been two days where it wasn’t on the menu.
What happened on those two days?
The chicken wasn’t good. We only work with two farms for our chicken. It’s interesting because it’s really the main course, whether you do the lunch or the dinner menu, unless you’re pescatarian, and it just felt so sad without the chicken. There’s just something really nice about having that big, comforting, loads of things on the table moment, like an Indian meal should be. We serve all this conceptual stuff early on, like the scallops, so to have that as your main hit of nostalgia is really important. Nothing replaces that. We’ve never done a curry in this restaurant—that’s the closest thing we have. So we got through, but it wasn’t the same.
Were your grandmothers able to experience Bibi?
Oh, my grandmothers would not be happy about me serving beef in this restaurant. They were both very strict vegetarians, so the idea of serving beef is a big no-no. They were really, really religious. So they wouldn’t be happy with this place. I had to wait for them to die to open it. I had the idea years ago. But I am very lucky because my parents are very lovely. They did a really good job of staying out of my way and letting me get on with it, unlike a lot of Indian parents.
If you were going to go out for a meal in London, where would you go?
I have a weird thing for pizza. Because I don’t eat out very often, and when I do go to restaurants, it’s normally to a friend’s restaurant with a tasting menu. And it’s always lovely. It’s nice to be looked after. But when I think about what I actually want to eat? Pizza. Ealing and Chiswick in West London have the best pizza restaurants outside of Naples. In fact, Napoli on the Road in Chiswick got voted the best pizza in the world by the Neapolitan Pizza Association. I like Vita Mia Pizzeria, which is walking distance from my house.
What was the last great meal you had?
The last great meal that I had that was thought-provoking, delicious and interesting was at Akoko. It’s really good. I went for dinner, but their lunch menu is one of the best value lunch menus in London. Turk Fatih Tutak in Istanbul was incredible. It was a really excellent meal and very unique.
As you go forward as a chef, what does success mean for you?
I’d really like to get a new watch. That could come one of two ways, right? Either we’re making loads of money and I can go down to Omega and buy a new one. Or it could mean that I’m such a celebrity chef that my PR agency manages to get me a deal with Omega. But joking aside, this is a business. We’re here to look after people, but it has to make money. Can you imagine saying to someone, ‘Work 90 hours a week for 19 years of your life, open this restaurant, go through the pressures, be super poor for a long time, put family life on pause and then don’t make any money at the end of it’? People would say you were crazy. You have to run a successful business.
How do you run a successful business? You do something delicious that people keep coming back for. It’s great to have new people coming in all the time, but any restaurant, it doesn’t matter if it’s a tasting menu or a café, needs repeat guests. At some point the pool starts drying up, even in a tourist city like London. And you have to keep your team happy. When the team is happy you can push your food further and you can have more dynamism. In the end the metric you have to measure with is going to be money, but there are all these other things that have to happen first. And an Omega.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.