In Her Time: Rose Chalalai Singh
Rose in her kitchen, captured by Olivia Lonsdale. Wearing the PREMIÈRE EDITION ORIGINALE watch. Courtesy of HURS.
Rose Chalalai Singh
In Her Time
There is a particular pleasure in watching someone spend her time exactly as she means to. These three women have made an art of it. A chef, an architect and a founder, each keeping her own clock, and happy to. We asked them how. In partnership with CHANEL.
By Bonnie Langedijk
Rose Chalalai Singh is the chef the art and fashion worlds would give a great deal to be fed by. She cooks for whom she pleases. She closed a celebrated restaurant at the height of its queue, not to slow down but so she could choose, and now those same crowds come to her instead, in Paris or wherever in the world she happens to be that week. Direct, quick to laugh and quicker to say what she thinks, she cooks the way she talks: warm, unfussy and reliably, memorably good. Cooking, she'll tell you, is mostly waiting. Rose is not the waiting sort.
Bonnie: How would you describe what you do?
Rose: How do I describe what I do? I'm a chef. I cook for people, and I spend most of my time in the kitchen or at the market, looking at ingredients and searching for ingredients and products.
When we spoke about time over the phone, you mentioned that as a chef you’re always waiting.
Rose: As a chef, I'm always waiting. Waiting for the delivery to arrive, waiting for people to arrive at the dinner, waiting for them to sit down, waiting for them to say, "We're ready for the meal," waiting for them to leave, waiting to clear the table when they've gone, and waiting to go to bed.
“As a chef, I'm always WAITING. Waiting for the delivery to arrive, waiting for people to arrive at the dinner, waiting for them to sit down.”
I imagine with cooking, you're almost always either waiting or rushing.
Rose: Yes. When we finish the prep, there's a lot of gap time. We're ready, but people don't normally arrive at the same time. So that's the waiting time.
Rose in her kitchen, captured by Olivia Lonsdale. Courtesy of HURS.
You also have to think about ingredients, because they need to ripen, or they need to cook, or they...
Rose: I think that's the most challenging part. I prepare all the ingredients so they're ready, and then when the guests arrive, we start cooking the things that need to be done, as the French say, "à la minute." So we're always playing with time.
We're in your space right now, and there's a broad collection of objects. Have you been collecting for a long time?
Rose: I love craft. I love objects. I love what people make, like ceramics, because sometimes when you look at a piece, you can go into the maker's mind: why they chose this colour, why it looks like that, why they designed it that way. Sometimes you can connect with their feelings or explore their thinking. I really love craft, especially old antique pieces, and I've been collecting them for years. They give me a lot of inspiration. Sometimes I see a ceramic plate and think, "Oh, I'll cook this, because it goes with this plate." The kitchen tools do the same. When I see a tool I haven't used for a long time, I think, "Oh, we have this. Why don't we use it? What is it for?" And the menu comes from the objects I have. It's not always the menu that chooses the object. A lot of the time, the object creates the menu.
Rose in her kitchen, captured by Olivia Lonsdale. Wearing the PREMIÈRE EDITION ORIGINALE watch. Courtesy of HURS.
How would you describe your personal relationship with time?
Rose: My own relationship with time is that I don't have much time for myself. When I do, I do very personal things, domestic life, very simple things, like laundry. I hardly ever cook for myself, because I like to cook for people. Rather than being alone and cooking for myself, I prefer to go to a restaurant with friends when I have the time. My relationship with time is everything. It's life. It's the time to arrive somewhere, the time to get up and do something; for me it's always about time. I run after time, I follow time, I work against time. For me, everything is timing, and everything has to happen at the right time.
Agreed
Rose: I have a relationship with time, and I always remind myself of this: for me, time is linked with the artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. He was HIV positive, so his work is about time, because he was dying. He was losing time. He didn't have time. He wrote a letter to his lover about time, and it's very beautiful. You should read it. So when I think about time, sometimes it's very romantic. Of course, the romance is a tragedy, but what he said about time is really great. He said, "Don't be afraid of the clocks. They are our time."
How do you usually start your day? Does time instantly play into it?
Rose: When I get up, I instantly think, "What are we doing with this time?" The first thing I do when I wake up is boil water to drink hot water with lemon. That also takes some time. While I'm waiting for the water to boil, I walk around and use that time to wake up and start the day. It's good, because the minute I plug in the kettle, I know, "Okay, it's time to start the day." That's my première.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
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