Why Asia’s best restaurant, Gaggan in Bangkok, is about more than flavours

Chef Gaggan Anand continues his quest to present diners with the unexpected, including ‘rat brains’ and radioactive mayonnaise

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Gaggan Anand’s restaurants in Bangkok, Thailand, showcase the chef-owner’s cooking and his theatrical skills. Above: the dish at Gaggan called “rat brains”. Photo: Gaggan

Published: 1:15pm, 13 Apr 2025

For those who love experiential dining, Gaggan Anand is well known.

The innovative chef’s eponymous restaurant in Bangkok, with its unconventional approach to fine dining, had a year-long waiting list at one point. It recently made the headlines for achieving the top spot in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants for the fifth time since 2015.

Anand, born in Kolkata, India, not only put the Thai capital on the progressive dining map, he also pushed the boundaries of Indian cuisine and its perception around the world. The chef was featured in the second season of Netflix’s Chef’s Table in 2018.

Anand’s journey began in hotel kitchens in India before he moved to Thailand in 2007, where he was appointed executive chef of Red, an Indian fine-dining restaurant in Bangkok.

Gaggan Arnand and his team receive the award for Asia’s top restaurant at Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony in Seoul, Korea, in 2025. Photo: handout

He did a stint at Ferran Adria’s restaurant El Bulli in Spain. Having learned boundary-breaking techniques from Adria, known as the father of molecular gastronomy, Anand brought them to Bangkok upon his return.

He launched Gaggan in 2010, and described it as a laboratory for his radical culinary reinventions. In the space of a few years, his 25-course emoji menu – where each course was defined not by a name but by one of the tiny pictograms – featuring dishes such as Lick It Up, which required diners to eat with their tongues, propelled the restaurant to number one on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list and earned it two Michelin stars.