Bollywood’s Go-to Caterer On What It Takes To Rustle Up A Meal For A Film Crew

“It may sound cliched but my father (Lakhan Lal Yadav) ran away from home in the remote village of Giridih (now in Jharkhand) to Bombay, with practically nothing in his pocket. This was the 1970s and the film industry was a smaller, more intimate place. He landed on a film set and was instantly hired to do odd jobs,” says Yadav, 44. Before long, Lakhan Lal Yadav caught the eye of stars such as Dharmendra and Sunil Dutt who offered him work as their personal cook. One of his most encouraging bosses turned out to be yesteryear actor Navin Nischol who helped him kickstart his catering business back in 1985. “A few years before his death, Mr Nischol had visited our office.? So happy he was seeing my father’s success that he was nearly moved to tears,” the proud son tells Outlook. Between père and fils, the Yadav duo has served meals to the units of over 100 films and TV shows over the last three decades: Vikram Vedha, Gully Boy, Gehraiyaan, Kick and Kaun Banega Crorepati, to name a few.

Initially, Lakhan Lal Yadav ran his business from home, a chawl in Mumbai’s Khar neighbourhood that is also home to Bollywood. “For the first five years, nobody knew him,” Yadav says. “There was no Google and no Instagram. He had to actually go from film set to film set to generate business by word-of-mouth. The business only started flourishing from 1990 onwards, and by the time I joined full-time in 2000, we were one of the best in the industry,” adds Yadav, who is a graduate of the Food Craft Institute in Pune and whose previous experience includes stints at McDonald’s and the Taj Hotels.

From Dharmendra’s time to now, the catering business has come a long way—a transformation that the Yadav family has seen up close as industry insiders. “When I was young, there was a saying, ‘Ek boti do roti’ (a leg of mutton and two pieces of bread). A meal on set was seen as incomplete without mutton gravy. Today, a movie or TV set has live stations which serve a lavish buffet. There are pasta bars and hot grills. Nobody eats mutton anymore.” In fact, the foreign film crew is overwhelmingly vegan and prefers gluten-free or no-dairy meals. While shooting for Chrisopher Nolan’s Tenet in Mumbai in 2019, he received an ‘allergies list’ from the unit well in advance and was surprised to discover that one crew member was allergic to mango. “Our job,” he grins, “was to make sure the fruit didn’t reach his plate.”

If Hollywood stars are conscious of their diet, their Hindi film counterparts aren’t far behind. He catered for the Sonam Kapoor starrer Khoobsurat in Bikaner for over a period of two months. “Sonam follows a strict diet,” he says. “She used to enjoy Indian food like any other hardcore Punjabi but she would consume more vegetables and less rotis and rice unlike the rest of us. At times, she would ask for just besan ka cheela (pancakes made from gram flour) for dinner.”

In a good year, Yadav pulls in an annual revenue of Rs 10 crore. Not bad for a venture that started its journey from a one-room tenement. With offices in Mumbai, Goa and New Delhi, Yadav is now working towards setting up outposts in promising two-tier cities like Lucknow, Bhopal and Jaipur, hopefully over the next few years as part of an ambitious expansion plan. “We couldn’t have asked for more,” he says, reflecting on the family’s rags-to-riches story. Asked if he is happy to be one of the unsung heroes of showbiz, he replies decidedly, “It’s not like we are not recognised. Our name appears on the film’s credits like everyone else’s and we are respected for our work on set. Every business has its backend players. We have to live with it.”

(This appeared in the print edition as "Hot Off The Grill")

Shaikh Ayaz is a Mumbai-based freelance journalist and editor. He writes on films, art, books and culture