Born in Odisha, India, in 1965, Senapati Borendra came to Hong Kong in 1989 and got his first job as a chef in 1998. In 2013 he became head chef of Trattoria Caffè Monteverdi, where he is now a partner.
I am Sena, short for Senapati. I was born in 1965 in Odisha, India, the oldest child of a poor farming family. I have one brother and two sisters, all younger, and I lost a sister when I was still a child.
I started at the village school, but the family did not have enough to live on, so I was sent to serve in a richer family’s home. I did not like it and soon went back. Then I joined a wandering theater company and acted with it all over India. After almost a year I came home, but life was hard, and with a friend and his father I ran away again, to the city.
There I took different jobs and tried to study and learn languages. My friend’s father worked for the railways and had free tickets once a year, and on one trip we went to Mumbai. I liked it so much that I stayed, at 18. I cooked for rich families and began to learn the profession. Then I moved to Bengaluru to cook for six students, and a new friend there suggested I try my fortune in Hong Kong. That was 1989.
I found a restaurant job as soon as I arrived, but the restaurant closed down. On the very day I decided to go back to India, the consulate of my country offered me a job. I took it, and my accuracy earned me everyone’s respect. The money I sent home was not enough, so in the evenings I also cooked part-time in Hong Kong restaurants.
In 1992 I married Seema, and we are happily married. Our son is 16 and studying in India.
In the end my attraction to food got the better of me, and in 1998 I got my first job as a chef, on Peng Chau Island. I learned new cuisines and how to run kitchens big and small. In the last ten years I have worked in a few Italian restaurants in Hong Kong, and in 2013 Monteverdi approached me and I became its head chef.
Home-style Italian dishes, mostly new to me and rare outside Italy, were an intriguing challenge, which I mastered with the help of one of the Italian owners. Working here is like being in a family, and I have been made a partner. The Italian partner keeps finding recipes all over Italy and even in history, from the Middle Ages to the end of the 1800s.
I love making desserts. Give me any dessert recipe, and I will not sleep until I get it right. Still, I do not eat sweets, nor beef or pork! Every night and every morning I check the news from India and the world, cricket included. I am a very calm person and rarely get angry.
If I had more time, I would make more desserts! Besides work, I am building a house in India with my brother: a decent roof for our families, a root from which my son can spread out into the world, and a place to return to with my wife when I retire.
My wish for the readers: you can be happy with very little. For some people, a piece of bread every day and a dry place to sleep are the happiest things in life. We should not be greedy, though not foolish either. Enjoy what you have and what you can achieve. And, of course, taste one of my desserts!
For the shoot I chose three dishes. The first is homemade potato gnocchi with a pumpkin and leek sauce. Many cooks use potato flour because it is easier. In Italian homes gnocchi are made with fresh potatoes, and that is how I make them. The quantities change with the quality of the potatoes, and only real sensitivity gives a consistent result day after day. My gnocchi have become a signature of the restaurant.
The second is grilled king prawns with cherry tomatoes and olives, a recipe the Italian partner suggested after a trip to the Cinque Terre. The third is Zuppa Tartara, a dessert from Pellegrino Artusi’s book of 1891, with a few little secrets of my own.
