COVID-19: How Chef Floyd Cardoz Celebrated India’s Culinary History With The Foodies Of The World
COVID-19: How Chef Floyd Cardoz Celebrated India’s Culinary History With The Foodies Of The World
Apr 03, 2020
On March 25, 2020, the world lost a giant in the culinary world due to complications from COVID-19. We take a look at how Floyd Cardoz celebrated India’s culinary history with the masses of New York and beyond.
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) a global pandemic. The first case of COVID-19 were first identified in Wuhan, the capital of the Hubei province in China in December 2019. Since then, the numbers of cases have been staggering. As of right now, John Hopkins University reports that globally there are 912,000 cases and growing. The highest cases remain in the United States with over 205,000 cases. As the world continues to make sense of the chaos and panic surrounding the pandemic, we mourn those who lost their lives in this ongoing tragedy.
Floyd Mark Cardoz was born in Mumbai, India on October 2, 1960. He pursued culinary arts at a time when it was considered unusual and even frowned upon for men to have a career in the restaurant/hospitality business. Originally, Cardoz was studying biochemistry but he realized that his heart was not in his master’s degree.
He switched focus and then began to train in a culinary degree in the city he was born in. He met his wife, Barkha, when both of them were in the hospitality school in the same town and then worked together in the for the distinguished Taj Group of Hotels.
After which, he went to study European cuisine (specifically French) in Switzerland. Once his training was complete, the couple emigrated to the United States in 1988. In 1992, Cardoz also worked with the late Gray Kunz in one of New York’s influential and popular restaurant, Lespinasse.
Cardoz was well-known and renowned for executing the famous restaurant – Tabla – where he was the executive chef and introduced New York city to the diversity and richness of Indian cuisine. The restaurant received three stars from The New York Times. “Before Floyd, and before Tabla, much of the discourse around Indian restaurants in America centred on the inexpensive buffets serving primarily anglicized Punjabi food—it was butter chicken and naan on repeat,” wrote Priya Krishna in her Vogue tribute to Cardoz. “Many Americans didn’t understand the regionality and nuance of Indian cooking, and so many talented Indian chefs simply didn’t have the platform to make meaningful change.” He was the recipient to numerous accolades including winning “Humanitarian Award of the Year” award given to him by FoodTV.
In a workshop Cardoz conducted with Google in 2009, we get an hour of insightful time into how he used to cook, his history, his passion for cooking. He shared that “I initially thought that I was going to into the sciences and I was doing my masters in Biochemistry when I had this moment in the lab one day that this is not something I want to do. I enjoy food. I enjoy cooking. And as a kid, I saw all this cooking in the kitchen with my cook at home. For those of you Indian families, you know that men don’t cook in India and you have someone do it for you.”
The same year, he also launched a line of ready to cook meals with the online grocer, Fresh Direct.
Indeed, Cardoz revolutionized the Indian cuisine in America. But, this was only the beginning of his success. Tabla closed its doors in 2010 and then Cardoz went on to lead many popular restaurants including the North End Grill in Battery Park City; at White Street, and in Tribeca. He also opened Paowalla in Soho, which got renamed Bombay Bread Bar.
His success was only beginning after 2010. In 2011, he went on to win the season of Top Chef Masters. An altruistic person – Cardoz always managed to think of using the money not to benefit him but he used the money he won ($110,000 USD) to start a foundation entitled the Young Scientist Foundation to enable high school and college students to work alongside experts to develop new cancer treatments at New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The same year GQ India named Cardoz as “Top 50 Most Influential Indians.”
This philanthropic endeavour was always close to his heart. His philanthropic goals also extended to Hunger Inc. Hospitality with a partnership with Sameer Seth and Yash Bhanage in 2015. In 2016, he released the book entitled Flavorwalla, which was designed and written for western audiences to adapt Indian cuisine recipes that they could try and make at home.
Cardoz was also a four-time James Beard award nominee and authored another cook book, One Spice, Two Spice. Unlike many other Indian chefs, Cardoz embraced the complexity and nuances of South Asian culture and cuisine. He also had restaurants in Mumbai called the Bombay Canteen and O Pedro, which featured the cuisine from his Goan roots.
This month, Cardoz had traveled to Mumbai to attend the anniversary of Bombay Canteen and witness the opening of Bombay Sweet Sho. He was also featured in the second season of Ugly Delicious where he was seen traveling with Aziz Ansari and Chang around China. He was proud of his heritage and in a must-watch episode showed less popular cities in India such as Lukhnow.
On March 8th, he shared on Instagram that he had become ill during his return to the United States via Frankfurt and as a precaution, he had admitted himself to the hospital. He is survived by his wife, Barkha, and two sons, Peter and Justin, his mother, and his five siblings.
The South Asian community in North America and India have lost a gem of a human being – who was not just a chef – but a remarkable human being.
Since his passing, people around the world have remembered him as an inspiration:
His partner, David Meyer said in an interview with Market Watch: “He was beyond talented as a cook. He was a super-taster, big-hearted, stubborn as the day is long, and the most loyal friend, husband, and dad you could imagine, “His life and career was full of triumph and adversity. We opened and closed two restaurants together and in that time he never once lost his sense of love for those he’d worked with, mentored, and mattered to. He made monumental contributions to our industry and to my organization, and his passing leaves us with a gaping hole.”
Padma Lakshmi , the host of Top Chef, tweeted, “@floydcardoz made us all so proud. Nobody who lived in NY in the early aughts could forget how delicious and packed Tabla always was. He had an impish smile, an innate need to make those around him happy, and a delicious touch. This is a huge loss.”
Bravo’s Top Chef‘s official twitter account also lauded and said that Cardoz “was an inspiration to all the chefs in the world.”
The Ugly Delicious host, David Chang, also tweeted that “ I feel so terrible for his family and his two sons. All the cooks and managers that worked under him. Easily one of the most beloved people in the business. He was criminally under appreciated, introduced so many new flavors and techniques to America. Tabla forever.”
Floyd’s reach went beyond the borders including in India with the following tweets:
Riyaz Almani tweeted: The entire industry is stunned to hear the tragic news, of the passing away of @floydcardoz. He was not only the finest ambassador of Indian cuisine but also what it means to be a chef and a human. Our prayers are with his family and# His legacy will continue to inspire us.
Celebrity Chef Vikas Khanna who also has a fierce presence as the host of Master Chef India tweeted that Floyd was an “immortal legacy.”
The tragic loss of Cardoz will be felt in New York, Mumbai, and in the culinary industry around the world. Just like the untimely loss of Anthony Bourdain caused shockwaves, Floyd’s legacy will continue to live through his successful restaurants. He changed the way Indian cuisine was understood in the United States and abroad.
Main Image Photo Credit: www.twitter.com
Nidhi Shrivastava
Author
Nidhi Shrivastava (@shnidhi) is a Ph.D. candidate in the English department at Western University and works as an adjunct professor in at Sacred Heart University. She holds double masters in South Asian Studies and Women's Studies. Her research focuses on Hindi film cinema, censorship, the figure o...
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