Wisdom Diary of a Food Stylist

HospiBuz:- Chef, please tell us what inspired you to enter the culinary world?

Chef Aditi Goel:- I think truthfully to answer this, I would say my Father. While growing I did see my dad passionately cooking certain dishes in particular. It still intrigues me how much he did impact me and my idea of what I wanted to become when I grew older, "A Chef". 

HospiBuz:- You are the R&D Chef at Yellow Tie Hospitality. When the terms  research and development get added to the chef, please explain what all comes under your work and what are your responsibilities there?

Chef Aditi Goel:- I was an R&D Chef with Yellow Tie Hospitality. R&D means either digging up your roots and creating the same phenomenal recipes or taking the things you know and learning new ways of technique to them. It's an extensive term and has a term depth of meaning with every individual. 

HospiBuz:- Give us some insights into food styling?

Chef Aditi Goel:- Its a modern-day job of beautifying food as a product, and definitely sounds glamorous but the sweat, R&D and work which goes in to identify the techniques to use products other than food to make them look like food and keep the food fresh for hours in front to camera and lights is a great challenge to have on set. 

  HospiBuz:- Please tell us about food photography tool kit. How does it look like and what all it has?

Chef Aditi Goel:- Oh! you might be laughing on this one if you ever see my kit! One might not just find some earbuds but a bunch of colours, brushes of variant size, blowtorch, variants of glue... It a crossover of heavy-duty tools meet kids into creativity class. 

HospiBuz:- “Food styling has given birth to the trend of plating and presenting the dishes”. What is your take on it?

Chef Aditi Goel:- This is very true, everyone be it at homes or new restaurant have become aware and conscious of “how to plate their food’ and new ways of plating a boring dish. I love the idea and am completely for it. 

HospiBuz:- Please tell us what goes on behind the scenes at Nostimo Hospitality when you shoot the videos?

Chef Aditi Goel:- With Nostimo I am Cooking on Camera. So from deciding on a recipe to having my plating, Mise en place ready with the correct details plays an important role. 

Also as I am not a very camera-friendly person it takes a lot for me to cook on camera. 

HospiBuz:- Would you like to share some funny/intellectual incident with us which happened during the ad shoots?

Chef Aditi Goel:- The energies, creativity and focus on a shoot are very inspiring and motivating. 

At a very recent shoot which I was doing with coco-cola in Srilanka – I was given a makeup van to cook food. It was funny to see how we managed to cook 18 dishes out of a makeup van as it was an outdoor location and there was a lot of rain.