Durga Misra is Sous Chef at Brasserie Chavot and is originally from Orissa in India.

Durga began his catering career at the Institute of Hotel Management near Madras in India. “I failed to get into the Indian Army which was my first choice as a career,’ says Durga, ‘so I ended up in a catering school in Madras. On reflection I’m very happy this happened.”

Following his ‘accidental’ culinary training in India, Durga has moved on to great things and cooked in great places including The Oberoi Rajvilas in India from 2000 to 2002 (voted by Tatler in 2001 as the best hotel in the world), One O One in Sheraton Park Tower, The Capital Hotel, where he worked under Eric Chavot and La Petite Maison in London.

As a child Durga would read Jules Verne and Rudyard Kipling and in college, the works of French chefs and culinary writers Georges Auguste Escoffier, Antonin Carême and Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. “I used to visualise a Blanquette de Veau or a Navarin de Agneau though I never actually saw them until I came into contact with French Chefs.” As a result of his early culinary idols, Durga’s cooking today has a very French influence.

Durga is proud to once again be working alongside a man he calls an ‘artist’, Chef Eric Chavot, at Brasserie Chavot.