Chef Floyd Cardoz is the Executive Chef of Tabla, a groundbreaking restaurant in New York City that serves New Indian cuisine cooked with the sensual flavors and spices of his native land. He is also the author of One Spice, Two Spice: American Food, Indian Flavors. Here he talks with author Richard C. Morais about writing The Hundred-Foot Journey.

Chef Cardoz: Hi Richard. I should start by saying how much I enjoyed The Hundred-Foot Journey. It is really a treat. How did you come to write it?

RCM: I was a friend of the late film producer, Ismail Merchant, of Merchant Ivory Productions. We used to cook together in London sometimes, and I got it into my head Ismail should find a literary property that could marry his love of the kitchen with his love of filmmaking. When I couldn’t find what I wanted, I sat down and wrote The Hundred-Foot Journey for him. Sadly, Ismail died before I finished the novel.

Chef Cardoz: The main character in the novel, Hassan Haji, and his family travel from Mumbai to London, then travel throughout Europe and finally settle in France. Have you been to all of those places? How did you write about each location?

RCM: I grew up in Zurich, Switzerland, close to the French Jura, and then lived for 17 years in London, as Forbes’s European Bureau Chief, so the European scenes came easily. My wife and I, when we were young, even lived for a year in the 5th arrondissement in Paris. But I had never been to India when I began writing this book narrated by an Indian chef raised in Mumbai, which was rather impertinent of me, so I scrambled together a 10-day business-research trip to India in the midst of the book’s creation.

Chef Cardoz: One of the things I noticed first about the novel was how vivid and sensual the cooking scenes are. Are you a cook? Did you have to do any research to write these parts of the book?

RCM: I do love to cook. Very much so. But I am an amateur cook, so I had to learn the more technical aspects of haute cuisine to convincingly pull off a plausible chef. I did so by studying classic texts and cookbooks, and through hanging out in famous kitchens. In Mumbai, for example, I spent a half-day in the kitchen of the acclaimed Khyber, and in New York, at the three-star fish restaurant, Le Bernardin

Chef Cardoz: You do a very good job portraying just how difficult it is to become a great chef. Hassan is an intern in Madame Mallory’s kitchen for years before joining the staff of a restaurant, and he has to work long, hard hours—barely breaking even—once he opens his own restaurant. What about this struggle appealed to you as a writer? Why did you feel this was good material for a novel?

RCM: I had a vague plot idea of where I wanted this novel to go – that Chef Haji fulfilled not just his culinary destiny, but, in so doing, also satisfied the unfulfilled hungers of Madame Mallory and his own family. But, honestly, the rest kind of wrote itself. Of course, working things out in the kitchen, it is a suitable metaphor for the hard work, vicissitudes and, ultimately, mysteries of life.

Chef Cardoz: Hassan is an Indian boy who is drawn to fine French cuisine. What about French food and the attractions of the kitchen so appeals to Hassan?

RCM: I don’t think anyone can really answer that. A Westerner might say it’s because he had that life-changing French meal with his mother, before she was killed, and a need to recreate this idyllic childhood state drove him to become a French chef. An Asian, on the other hand, might say his inexplicable drive to become a French chef was seeded in his past lives. So who knows?

Chef Cardoz: Like Hassan, who spends most of his life living abroad, I was born and raised in India, received my culinary training in Europe, and have since spent most of my life in America. What do you think nationality means in this book?

RCM: I have the same confused cultural legacy. I believe my novel, at one level, is not about food at all, but about human beings who find they have a calling far greater than their own culture, and it compels them to go out into the world, in order to fulfill their destiny. In the process, these people ultimately don’t belong to any one patch of earth they call “home,” but develop a kind of “international soul”. This book is about what these rootless people gain and what they lose pursuing their mission in life.