Inside the Mind of Gaggan Anand: The Chef Who Connected Music with Fine Dining Like No One Else

Bangkok is a city accustomed to contrasts. Heat and rain, buzzing streets and quiet courtyards by the river, absolute chaos and calm existing side by side. It is in this city that chef Gaggan Anand created his restaurant, not simply as another dining room, but as a concert stage. Ranked No. 1 in Asia for 2025 and No. 6 in the world according to The World’s 50 Best, the moment you enter the dimly lit room and take your seat, nothing, absolutely nothing—can prepare you for what you are about to experience. At Gaggan, you don’t just eat. You take part in an experience that could not have been created by anyone else in the world.

"A Greek-language version of this article appears on FNL Guide"

The day after the dinner, Gaggan sits across from me with what he calls his “drummer’s hands,” marked by two tattoos: the iconic Nirvana smiley and a phoenix rising from the ashes.

“Who’s your favorite drummer?” I ask.

The answer comes without hesitation. “Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins. Both in the same band…”

A smile follows, one that warns you this will not be a conventional interview.

You’re not going to tell me that 90 decibels are too much

He speaks with the same intensity about Danny Carey (Tool), Mike Portnoy (Dream Theater), and Stewart Copeland (The Police). Drummers with character, musicians who don’t simply accompany the music but helped build it, note by note, alongside their bands.

“I always wanted to be a musician, and I always wanted to be a chef. It was like yin and yang, constantly fighting each other. I know very well that cooking is my career, but music is my soul.”

“At first, I started as a drummer, but I had an accident. I ended up under a bus and almost lost my leg. Thirty-five years later, I still take painkillers. Sometimes when I play drums at home, I lose control of my leg.”

You’ve said before that your restaurant is progressive, right? But last night, we didn’t hear much progressive music.

“Yes, but the first track was Pink Floyd. I change the music every three months. Usually, I include two progressive tracks. This time I also had Tool. But did you notice? At that moment, when the track played, only you and I connected. Everyone else thought, ‘what the hell.’ Then I played Ice Ice Baby, just to destroy everything.”

Honestly, how do you deal with someone who doesn’t like loud music in your restaurant?

“Fuck off. Leave. Walk out. You can take all of that as my answer. I grew up with rock ’n’ roll. You’re not going to tell me that 90 decibels are too much.”

What truly bothers Gaggan Anand is the passivity he encounters in fine dining restaurants. “Most places just play music in the background. It’s wrong. It’s bad. Food is emotion.”

The restaurant experience is built around musical composition. The playlist changes every season, just like the menu. It starts gently and escalates as the night progresses. Music is not there to fill the space, it is used as a tool of direction, almost like stagecraft.

“I want music to make you feel something. When I play Pink Floyd, it has to mean something. When Hey Jude by The Beatles comes on, it has to hit hard. I want to see people’s faces change.”

The sound system in Gaggan’s restaurant costs half a million dollars and is positioned so that no matter where you sit, the sound is clear, like a live concert. And that is not an exaggeration.

When I ask him which dish he has designed that feels the most theatrical, he laughs.

“All of them. It’s not about the dishes, it’s about the journey. Food at Gaggan is magic, a trick, a psychological game.”

You throw a stone at me? I become a rainbow

The example he gives is telling: the famous Brain, a dish that looks like a goat’s brain with green curry. The flavor, however, is exactly as it should be, seasoned, aromatic, comforting, almost traditional. The challenge is visual and mental, not gustatory.

“I play with your limits. But flavor always comes first. Then comes the combination of texture, temperature, and music.”

The conversation keeps circling back to music. Not by chance. For Gaggan, music isn’t just inspiration, it’s the source of everything he creates.

The most defining album of his life? The Dark Side of the Moon. His face changes when he mentions it. He doesn’t just call it a classic, but the most creative album ever made in terms of aesthetics, color, and emotion. At one point, he even created a dish based on it as a protest against Brunei’s anti-LGBTQ laws. “You throw a stone at me? I become a rainbow.” Each color on the plate was a different fruit. And the presentation always happened while Time was playing. Music is not merely accompaniment, it’s a story within the story.

His obsession peaks when he talks about the Foo Fighters. He has seen them live all over the world. He was at Madison Square Garden for their first show after COVID. He was there at the Taylor Hawkins tribute concert in London. Rami Jaffee, the band’s keyboardist, is now a personal friend.

When I ask what he would cook for them backstage, the answer is immediate.

“Barbecue. The Foo Fighters love barbecue, and Dave Grohl even more.”

Somewhere between Pink Floyd, Nirvana, and Tool, a small but deeply moving story emerges. On the day he knew his mother was about to die, any day now, he decided to get two tattoos. On one hand, the classic Nirvana smiley. On the other, the phoenix, the bird reborn from its ashes.

“I wanted to smile, and at the same time I knew I wanted to be reborn. But right after that, I got on a plane, and the ink completely faded from my skin.”

He has never touched them up, even though they are now barely visible on his hands.

Toward the end of our conversation, I ask whether the next step might be having a live band playing while food is being cooked and served.

“I’ve rejected that idea. It would be too loud, and the sound wouldn’t be what I want. You know, even this possibility, I think about it as a musician. The audio result would destroy the dining experience, and that’s definitely not something I want to do.”

So what should we expect next?

“In April, we close. We’ll make it even more theatrical, more extreme, but in a way no one expects. I’m going to change everything.”

If one were to distill the Gaggan experience into a single phrase, perhaps the most accurate would be that the creator and the creation have fully merged. He is a musician who cooks and composes. A chef who projects his personal universe onto the plate. A performer who demands that the audience step into the mood. And in the end, what stays with you isn’t a signature dish or an impressive effect, but the feeling that food inside those walls is something broader than taste alone.

Gaggan doesn’t aim to offer you a dinner. He aims to offer you a journey, one that shakes you enough so that when you leave the table, you feel slightly different than when you arrived.

“Did you notice that elderly Thai couple last night?” he asks me. “All evening, they ate and observed with almost no reaction. But the moment Hey Jude came through the speakers, they raised their hands and sang loudly. They might not have known the lyrics. They might not have known whether the song says Hey Jude or Hey June. It doesn’t matter. For a moment, they became children again.

That is Gaggan.”