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At Oberoi Hotels, Chef Ricardo redefines modern gastronomy by weaving memory, emotion, and technique into every plate
A brilliant conversation with Chef Ricardo on food, philosophy, and the art of creating experiences beyond taste
On two glittering August weekends at Vetro and Enoteca at The Oberoi, Mumbai (2–3 August), and at 360° at The Oberoi, New Delhi (7–8 August), Chef Ricardo Chaneton sailed into India with the quiet confidence of a pioneer. The Venezuelan-born, Hong Kong–based co-founder and executive chef of MONO has a way of explaining his cuisine that’s as cinematic as the plates themselves, “Imagine you’re in a boat that has a French flag. It departs from Venezuela and goes all the way to Hong Kong. Along the way, it collects ingredients, memories, people,” he says. “MONO is that: Latin America through my eyes: the past, the present, and the future.”
It’s an elegant shorthand for a culinary language that is at once rooted and restless: Latin American emotion, French savoir-faire, and Asian seasonality translated into a fine-dining grammar.
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Latin America, Reframed
For Chaneton, the pop-up was a chance to gently dismantle clichés. Too often, he argues, Latin American food is perceived as boisterous, rustic, and invariably “Tex-Mex adjacent” – delicious, yes, but rarely associated with refinement. MONO counters that stereotype with depth and restraint: dishes like foie gras glossed with mole; Racan pigeon wrapped in a Venezuelan-style yuca tamal; and desserts that deliberately dial down sugar to let Ecuadorian cacao, ‘savory’ fruits, and even pink peppercorns speak clearly.
“Latin America is not only raw, rustic flavors, it’s also refined,” he says. “There’s knowledge, there are techniques, and there are stories to tell.” At the table, those stories are coaxed forward not with excess but with editing. A long-pepper note where you expect vanilla. A soft, citrus-bright soursop beside a Colombian dulce element. The surprise is never a gimmick; it’s an argument for nuance.
So Similar, Yet So Different
India, as it turns out, felt uncannily familiar. “When I ate around Delhi and Mumbai, sometimes I said, ‘This is Venezuela. This is Colombia.’ I felt at home,” he admits. He points to the way green chutney echoes Venezuela’s beloved guasacaca served, like its Indian cousin, as a welcome on the table; or how Caribbean curries and Indian masalas share a vocabulary of warmth and layering.
The historic traffic of ingredients strengthens that kinship. Chef Chaneton loves reminding guests that peanuts, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, and cacao all native to the Americas now feel universal across Indian kitchens. In return, Asia gave Latin America citrus, spices, and culinary ideas via centuries of trade. It’s why MONO is comfortable deploying an Indian long pepper in dessert or flirting with a beautifully aromatic local mustard-seed oil he discovered mid-prep: not to mimic Indian food, but to honor Asia as the place where his metaphorical boat has dropped anchor.
Adapting Without Disappearing
Cooking away from home imposes a discipline: listen, learn, adjust and then hold the line. Before service, Chaneton and his team ate widely to calibrate palate. “Here, salt levels run higher closer to Spain or France and spices are more assertive,” he notes. The response wasn’t to rewrite MONO, but to rebalance. The pop-up leaned into a touch more umami and spice while keeping the restaurant’s signatures intact. “I didn’t want to lose our identity or disappoint the guest,” he says. “It’s a dance.”
His approach to sweetness offers a window into that philosophy. Living and cooking in Asia, he has embraced a lighter hand with sugar closer to the Hong Kong habit of finishing a meal with fruit so desserts at MONO obsess over ingredient flavor rather than saccharine heft. You taste cacao before you taste “chocolate”; you finish the last spoonful because the palate isn’t exhausted halfway through.
Bread, Memory, and the Meaning of Hospitality
MONO’s bread course is a love letter to ritual. The “mother dough,” started the day the restaurant opened, is enriched with quinoa, amaranth, kiwicha, sesame, sometimes even lavender. It lands at the center of the table to be torn and shared, an act Chef Chaneton defends with the fervor of a traditionalist. The anticipation, the aroma, the passing of the loaf: it’s hospitality rendered tactile. “Some of life’s longest-lasting memories happen when people come together to enjoy a meal,” he says. That line could be a mission statement for The Oberoi’s dining rooms as much as for MONO.
Pioneering a Movement
When MONO opened in 2019, Latin American fine dining in Asia was more idea than reality. The safer path, Chaneton recalls, would have been to follow, not lead. Suppliers had never handled some of his requested produce; diners associated the region with a narrow band of flavors. Hong Kong – open-minded, itinerant, cosmopolitan proved to be the right harbor. Curiosity met craftsmanship, and momentum followed. Today, Latin American tasting menus are earning stars and seats in cities from Singapore to Tokyo and Taipei. “It feels good to have been part of a movement of chefs saying: let’s stop doing what doesn’t belong to us, let’s tell our own stories,” he says.
Storytelling at MONO is literal, too. The team created Monopedia, a compact “dictionary” of ingredients, tools, and chiles—written in the same conversational voice Chaneton uses at the table, so guests can keep learning after the last course.
Two Dishes, Two Touchstones
Ask him to pick the most personal plate and he offers two. First, a seafood-and-cacao composition at home it’s langoustine or scampi; in India, he pivoted to Kerala prawns built around house-made chocolate. The dish is a memory box: school trips to Venezuelan cacao farms, the shock of tasting fresh cacao pulp, the first time he fermented beans during the anxious quiet of 2020. “When we made our own chocolate in the restaurant, the smell, the fermentation it brought happiness,” he remembers. “I told my team: never again will we buy chocolate. We’ll make it.” It’s technique, yes, but mostly it’s belonging.
The second is a dessert that stages his whole journey in miniature: Venezuelan soursop, a Colombian dulce component, an Asian inflection, and the prickle of long pepper. On paper, it shouldn’t work. On the palate, it clicks. “I’ve made peace with not pleasing everyone,” he shrugs. “But it’s beautiful when a guest moves from ‘why?’ to ‘oh—wow.’ Everything is possible when you cook with intention and love.” That same spirit shows up elsewhere at MONO, a now-famous oyster with banana that startles, then satisfies.
Why It Mattered Here, Now
At Vetro and at 360°, the setting met the story: The Oberoi’s reverence for classic hospitality, an anniversary season in Delhi, Enoteca’s serious wine library in Mumbai, and a guest chef determined to argue for Latin America’s elegance. The menu read like a passport stamped across oceans; the plates felt like letters home. And Chaneton’s boat kept its course: French flag, Venezuelan heart, Asian waters singular, as the name promises.
In a dining world that often mistakes volume for voice, Chef Ricardo Chaneton’s thesis is refreshingly clear. Refine, don’t flatten. Adapt, don’t disappear. Tell the truth of where you’re from and where you are. And always pass the bread.
About the Author
Swati Chaturvedi, a seasoned media and journalism aficionado with over 10 years of expertise, is not just a storyteller; she’s a weaver of wit and wisdom in the digital landscape. As a key figure in News18 Engl…Read More
Swati Chaturvedi, a seasoned media and journalism aficionado with over 10 years of expertise, is not just a storyteller; she’s a weaver of wit and wisdom in the digital landscape. As a key figure in News18 Engl… Read More
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