Manu Chandra is the Chef Partner of the Olive Group of Restaurants and the brainchild behind Toast & Tonic (Bangalore and Mumbai), Monkey Bar (Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata),The Fatty Bao (Bangalore, Kolkata and Mumbai), Olive Beach (Bangalore), Olive Goa and Chinese Bar House – Cantan (Bangalore). 

Manu’s passion for food surfaced at a young age, thanks largely to a foodie family. School taught him to develop a completely original perspective on everything, by rewarding innovation and fresh thinking. Later at St. Stephen’s College, he wrote, designed and helped photograph a book on fusion cuisine. Manu then enrolled at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) NY, where he apprenticed with some of the City’s most celebrated kitchens, including Restaurant Daniel, Le Bernardin, Gramercy Tavern, Café Centro, Jean Georges and Town and also opened the now legendary Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Manhattan. Armed with top honours from CIA and a prestigious Sea Food Masters Award for the National Recipe Competition 2002, he travelled to Norway to work with Michelin starred Chef Eyvind Hellstrom at Bagatelle, well before Nordic cuisine was even acknowledged globally.

Manu was featured on India Today’s list of Young Achievers, and in 2007, he was selected as one of the top 10 Best Young Chefs in the Country by Taste and Travel Magazine. Business Times and Food & Nightlife also rated Manu as one of India’s 10 best chefs, and he has been awarded the Golden Star Award for the Most Admired Chef in India 2011. Manu has received accolades and appreciation from around the world as one of the most promising and talented chefs in India, namely in the New York Times and Time Magazine. He was also featured on the Elle Magazine Hot List, selected by GQ India Magazine as one of the 50 Most Influential Young Indians three years in a row (2015, 2016 and 2017), and was selected by Fortune India Magazine’s ‘40 under 40, Class of 2016’ - an exclusive list of India’s finest young business leaders. Awarded Chef of the Year at the Times Food & Nightlife Awards - Bangalore in 2017, Manu’s written extensively on food and food trends for a cross section of publications including Forbes, Mint Lounge, BBC Good Food, The Week, India Today, Yahoo.com and The Times of India.

Manu is massively involved with an initiative called The Social Kitchen which aims to bring families back to the kitchen or table to interact and talk using new kitchen design. He’s also the founding curator and is on the advisory board for the Serendipity Arts Festival; India’s largest, inclusive arts fest, which had culinary arts as a discipline for the first time. A platform he uses to showcase indigenous cultures around food, including, but not limited to, lectures and tasting series. He believes there’s a blurring of lines between art and food, whereby food is used as satire, immersive performances and even street theatre to raise awareness about cultural and sustainability issues.

In this workshop, you will learn how to make a Pizza at home from none other than Chef Manu Chandra!

You will learn:

• Dough/Pizza Base
• Easy Pizza Sauce
• Toppings (Mushroom & Blue Cheese; Spinach & Goat Cheese)

About Studio Fifteen 

When Chef Pooja Dhingra set up the Le15 Patisserie kitchen in March 2010 the plan was to run baking and cooking classes out of it. And she did exactly that, with weekend classes every month for three years. Then, there came a point at which she felt that they could do a lot more with a kitchen space that was dedicated to culinary workshops. And Studio Fifteen was born as a culinary hub for everything from workshops, to private lessons and corporate training sessions, to pop-up meals and chef collaborations. The classes were aimed at everyone who just wanted to learn how to bake or cook in an environment that wasn’t intimidating. The mission of this space was to encourage people to absorb and share knowledge. After all, it was born of her own constant need to keep learning and growing.