That’s not to say he hasn’t been working hard on the new branch of Sindhu on P&O Cruises’ Britannia, but the fact that he has done it all before certainly helps.

Kochhar says: “The life on the ship is slightly different to the life on land, but having said that running restaurants is no different.

“I have to be slightly more organised. If you know the grocery supplier comes only twice a week you stock up more but having said that most suppliers come most days.”

He says lessons were learnt from Sindhu’s two sister restaurants on Azura and Aurora while he also runs two branches of East on Ventura and Arcadia.

Kochhar believes P&O’s own heritage complements his Indian restaurants, adding: “The brand of P&O goes back and if you look into the history they started off coming to India, and if you go onboard you still see a good proportion of the staff is Indian. It feels like the right kind of heritage.”

Nor does it mean customers visiting Britannia’s Sindhu will have a sense of deja vu if they have seen some of his other onboard venues.

Kochhar says: “Britannia is going to be a special ship. Our brief was it needs to be exciting, new, out there, and pushing the boat out. That’s what we have done.

“This restaurant will have a new menu and we have been trying and tasting that menu for some time now.”

Mixing it up

And he is excited about being onboard a ship featuring restaurants run by James Martin, Eric Lanlard and vintner Olly Smith.

“It has a huge mix of various chefs with very different styles, but still complementing each other,” Kochhar says.

But he is most impressed to be onboard a ship where Marco Pierre White’s menus will be available in the main restaurants for the first time.

“He is like a godfather,” he says. “We look up to him with huge respect as he’s inspired so many of us chefs. To be mentioned alongside him is a huge honour.”

Having grown up in India he moved to the UK in 1994 where he worked in the restaurant industry before opening Benares Restaurant & Bar in 2003. This earned him his second Michelin star in 2007, which he has kept ever since.

“It was a new culture but having lived in India I was used to that,” Kochhar says. “India is so diverse you can wind up in a place where you don’t understand the language or the culture, so it was no different when I came here.”

That should leave him well-placed to meet the myriad demands he can expect to meet onboard Britannia.