SINCLAIRS HOTELS & RESORTS

Group Executive Sous Chef

Kolkata • On-site, extensive travel to properties • Full-Time • 7+ Years Experience

About SinclairsSinclairs Hotels & Resorts is one of eastern India's most established hospitality names, operating nine properties across the country's hills, plains and coastline — from Himalayan resorts to a beachfront hotel in the Andamans. The group is a listed company with a completely debt-free balance sheet and a substantial cash surplus, now in an active expansion phase alongside a deliberate transformation of how it runs: its commercial discipline, its people systems, and its technology.

Food is where guests feel that transformation first. The group is bringing its nine kitchens under a single culinary standard for the first time — one food philosophy, standard recipes, disciplined food cost, safe kitchens — while keeping what makes each location's food worth travelling for. The Group Executive Chef sets that standard. This role makes it real in every kitchen.

About the RoleYou will be the Group Executive Chef's number two and the group's senior hands-on culinary operator. Where the Executive Chef sets the food philosophy, menus and standards, you carry them into the kitchens: you train the teams on the recipe cards, you run the audits, you fix what the audit finds, and you stay until the kitchen holds the standard without you. You will spend more time in the properties than at head office.

You will also be the group's most capable pair of hands. When a head chef leaves, a property opens, a wedding season peaks or a kitchen in Gangtok or Port Blair is not performing, you go and run it — for a week or for a quarter — and you leave it stronger than you found it. You are the person the Executive Chef trusts to be in the kitchen they cannot be in.

We are specifically looking for someone trained in the kitchens of Taj, Oberoi or Leela — who has lived the discipline of a top Indian hotel group, knows what a standard looks like when it is enforced every day, and wants to build that standard across a group rather than maintain it in one hotel.

Where This Role GoesThis is the clearest path to Executive Chef in the group. As the estate grows, the properties will need executive chefs who already know the Sinclairs standard because they built it — and this role is where they come from.

- Year one:



standard recipes and plating guides rolled out and holding in every kitchen; each head chef trained and audited; the weakest two or three kitchens brought to standard by direct intervention.
- Years two and three: property Executive Chef at a flagship or new-build Sinclairs property, or the group's Executive Chef as the head-office culinary team grows and the current incumbent moves up.

Key ResponsibilitiesStandards Rollout & Training• Take the group's standard recipe cards, plating guides and yield specs from the Executive Chef and implement them kitchen by kitchen — demonstrate, train, taste, correct, and repeat until they hold.

- Train head chefs, sous chefs and cooks on technique, mise en place, portion control and plating; build the muscle memory that makes the standard automatic.
- Deliver the group culinary training curriculum on the ground; identify and develop cooks with the potential to grow.

Kitchen Audits & Corrective Action• Run the property kitchen audit cycle: taste, presentation, hygiene, process, mise en place, storage and cost discipline.

- Agree corrective plans with each head chef and personally see them through; re-audit until closed.
- Report audit findings and kitchen readiness to the Executive Chef with a clear view of which kitchens are holding standard and which need intervention.

Food Safety & Hygiene• Enforce FSSAI compliance and HACCP-based practice in every kitchen: receiving, storage, temperature logs, labelling, allergen control, cleaning schedules and pest control.

- Prepare kitchens for statutory and internal audits; close non-conformances fast.

Direct Kitchen Operations• Step in to run any property kitchen during head chef vacancies, peak season, major weddings and events, or performance recovery — for as long as it takes.

- Lead the kitchen for high-stakes events: large weddings, VIP stays, full-property buyouts and MICE groups, alongside the property team.
- Be the culinary lead on the ground for current-property openings: kitchen commissioning, team hiring and training, opening menus and the first ninety days of service.

Food Cost & Waste• Drive portion control,



yield management and wastage reduction at the property level; support monthly food cost reviews with each head chef.

- Work with property stores and the Purchase Manager on par levels, receiving quality and ingredient specifications; flag substitution and quality issues early.

Menus & Regional Cuisine• Support the Executive Chef on menu development and seasonal refreshes; test and cost new dishes and train them into the kitchens.

- Bring regional depth to the properties — Bengali, Himalayan, Sikkimese and Tibetan in the hills and plains, Nilgiri in Ooty, island seafood in Port Blair, Rajasthani in Udaipur — working with local cooks to keep it authentic.

What We're Looking ForRequired• Currently or recently with IHCL (Taj), Oberoi or The Leela, with at least 2 years as Senior Sous Chef in a full-service hotel. This is a firm requirement.

- 7+ years in hotel kitchens overall, including high-volume banqueting and weddings.
- Strong command of Indian regional cuisine with solid continental and pan-Asian capability; able to run any section and any outlet.
- Hands-on experience implementing recipe standardisation, SOPs and food safety systems (FSSAI, HACCP) — not just working within them.
- A record of training and developing cooks and junior chefs, with people who would follow you.
- Demonstrated portion, yield and wastage discipline with numbers to show for it.
- Formal culinary or hotel management qualification.
- Willingness to travel extensively and to be posted at a property for weeks at a time, including remote hill and island locations.

Strongly Valued• Experience in a task-force, cluster or pre-opening role — parachuted into a kitchen to fix or open it.

- Familiarity with Bengali, Himalayan or North-East cuisine.
- Experience running kitchens in locations with difficult supply chains.
- Comfort with modern productivity and AI tools for costing, recipe management and reporting.

Who Thrives HereA doer with standards. You have been trained by the best and it shows in how you receive a delivery, hold a section and plate a dish — and you would rather be in a kitchen making it right than in an office describing it. You are calm under a wedding for eight hundred, patient with a cook who is trying, and immovable on hygiene and recipe discipline. You want the Executive Chef's job one day and you know the way to earn it is by making nine kitchens perform.

📌 Executive Sous Chef (Kolkata)
🏢 Sinclairs Hotels u0026 Resorts
📍 Kolkata