Dilli chef wins NZ fellowship

He’s a Delhi boy from a Punjabi family, and that gives him a natural affinity for food, but chef Kunal Kapur has taken that many steps further.
Kunal, the executive sous chef at the Leela Kempinski, and the host and judge on Masterchef India, was awarded a prestigious fellowship by the government of New Zealand on Friday in Delhi.
The Sir Edmund Hillary Fellowship 2012, awarded to Kunal by the government of New Zealand in the field of food and beverage, is given every year to an individual for his/her contribution in their respective field.Previous winners include Rahul Gandhi and Vijay Mallya. “They confirmed a week ago that they’d decided to give it to me,” says the 33-year-old chef. “Incidentally, a delegation from NZ, including their primary industries minister David Carter, was visiting India this week, and so he awarded it to me in Delhi this week on behalf of NZ PM John Key. I’ll be travelling to NZ in January, where I will study their agriculture and food sector in detail,” says Kunal.