Ojas has two founders in the kitchen: Himanshu, chef and co-founder, and Ankit, culinary director and co-founder. People know roughly what a chef does. The second title gets asked about.
A chef is responsible for service. A culinary director is responsible for repeatability. One makes tonight good. The other makes sure the same dish is the same dish in three weeks, cooked by someone else, at four times the volume, in a marquee with no gas line.
Most of the work happens before anyone cooks. What goes on the menu and why. What it costs at the portion size we actually serve. Which dishes hold for ninety minutes in a chafing dish and which collapse. How a recipe is written down so it survives being handed over. Which supplier gets the order when the first choice has nothing worth buying that week.
It is also the role that says no. A dish that tastes excellent and cannot be produced for a hundred covers without falling apart does not go on a catering menu, however good it is on a plate. Deciding that early is the difference between a menu and a wish list.
Why it matters to someone booking catering: a restaurant kitchen and a catering operation are running at the same time, from the same team, on the same day. Without someone holding the standard across both, one of them quietly becomes the lesser version. The point of the role is that you cannot tell which service you got.
It is not a glamorous job and it does not photograph. It is the reason the food is the same when nobody is watching.
