“I used to miss my cooking so I would order food from Arth when I was off work. I would order a mutton biryani and would also give a five-star rating,” laughs Chef Amninder Sandhu. “I missed my restaurant and you want that one place—your go-to place—where you know you get your chicken tikka, dal, biryani, and more,” she admits.
For February, we wanted to interview someone about love. Whether that meant love for one’s roots, community, or passion, it didn’t matter. Naturally, we were reminded of Chef Amninder Sandhu. Who could be a better person than her to talk about Indian roots, a love for regional cuisine, cooking in a gas-less kitchen and now basking in the success of Bawri?
For the uninitiated, Chef Sandhu, the woman behind Goa’s and Mumbai’s Bawri, once used to head the kitchen at the now-shuttered, but much-lauded restaurant, Arth. When it opened in 2017, Arth was considered to be India’s first and only gas-free fine-dining restaurant. Chef Sandhu has carved her niche in the culinary industry over the years. From working in the kitchens at Taj Lands End, setting up Arth, being the only Indian contestant in Netflix’s Final Table, launching her delivery brand Iktara and Ammu during the pandemic, Nora, her restaurant in Pune, to opening Bawri—it is safe to say that Chef Sandhu knows what she is doing.
I briefly met Chef Sandhu in December when I went for a review at the then newly-opened Bawri in BKC. A month later when I met her and introduced myself again, I was pleasantly surprised that she remembered me. “We have met,” she said with a warm smile. On a Saturday afternoon, Chef Sandhu called us at Bawri —the only free time she gets between lunch and dinner service. She was dressed casually yet effortlessly stylish in a classic denim jean, a black t-shirt, and her signature bob.
Photos: Chef Amninder Sandhu
A chef without her apron
Chef Sandhu’s effortless style paired with command is what I witnessed throughout. I observed how the chef took a pinch of food from each plate to taste and was quick to give her feedback. She later urged her team to taste the new menu dishes. When she noticed that I was ready to begin the interview, she quickly excused herself and walked toward the setup, giving me tips where she felt it would be better to record the interview.
Talking to Chef Sandhu was anything but intimidating. She had a friendly presence. “When I’m not wearing my apron,” she started and chuckled. “I’m a very lazy person. A day in my life when I have something to do is all bhasad,” she laughs. “I’m all over because I have so many things to do and my pace is different,” she says. “But when I’m at home and have nothing to do then I take it slow and easy.” I felt like I was talking to a friend; someone I could be candid with and joke around. And that is exactly what the chef and I did during the hour. From discussing whacky fusion street food in khaugallis, to complaining about the traffic in Bandra, I realised how despite the difference in our age, upbringing, and profession, we managed to find common topics to chat about.
Chef Sandhu’s hobbies, also revolve around food. “I like to grow plants, vegetables, and flowers.” She explains that eventually, she wants to live on a farm because growing up in the Northeast was a lot like growing up on a farm. “For me,” she says, “my ultimate luxury is to spend time with my family and dog when I take time off and to have a relaxed meal with them. This means the world to me.”
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Chef Sandhu is big when it comes to family and honouring her roots. This can be seen from her menu and the kind of dishes she has.
Food at a chef’s house
In one of her reels, she says that the ultimate compliment she can get for her food is when someone compares it to their mum or grandmother’s cooking. She associates her mum with the mutton curry. “It’s called Mumma’s Mutton Curry and I have had it on my menu for many years and is loved by all. It’s a simple mutton curry that my mum used to make with potatoes and it was our Sunday afternoon lunch. In Assam, we used to play outdoors a lot and I remember once when we came home for lunch, my brother wouldn’t even let my mum transfer the curry in a bowl. So my mum just put the pressure cooker on the table and the whistle went off and we were engulfed with the aroma. We were so hungry that we would eat off that pressure cooker and I try to recreate that childhood memory on the menu,” she shares.
Even now, Chef Sandhu tells that meals at home are very elaborate. “My mum-in-law is obsessed with food,” she says, “we are all obsessed with food. So, it is never the usual dal chawal kind of meal.” She shares how meals on Sunday are elaborate such as fish, lobster, clams with neer dosa, biryanis, shammi kebabs, Sindhi kadhi and rice, stew, and appams. “It’s mostly Indian regional dishes, not much western cooking but we do an occasional grilled chicken, fish, or even lamb chops.”
This response busted the myth that chefs have dal chawal at home. She went ahead and busted another myth for us. “Everyone asks my husband about the fancy food he must be eating at home because his wife is a chef and I always say no. I don’t want to bring work home, that’s the last thing I want to do. When I’m home, I don’t want to talk about food and unwind and switch off from something I’m excessively doing. But if there is a reason to celebrate or when we have friends and family over then I like to cook.”
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Hitting the nostalgic note
Chef Sandhu feels that it is easier to evoke the feeling of nostalgia in someone because “even though dal chawal or a mutton curry might be different in different homes somewhere it still reminds you of your home and that is how nostalgia plays a big role in my cooking.” Chef Sandhu recalls how she opened Bawri Goa, with her business partner, Sahil Sambhi on June 2022 last year which was an off-season. “Within two or three days, I saw my reception area be as crowded as a railway station, to the extent that I didn’t have time to train my staff about certain things that worked or didn’t work. They were all so overworked,” she explains. I wondered how a fine-dine restaurant serving regional Indian food—food everyone grew up eating became such a hit. Chef Sandhu breaks it down for me. “Because people don’t cook at home anymore,” she states. “Even the things we grew up eating are becoming less common at home and no one’s doing elaborate cooking. You wouldn’t hear people saying ‘Oh, I’m making raan biryani today’. So even though our food is relatable, it is not home food anymore so you can enjoy it at the restaurant.”
Most dishes on Bawri’s menu have some anecdote or are nostalgic to her, for example, the butter chicken. It sounds simple but it is not a usual recipe. “Over the years I have added things to it, worked on it [the recipe] and this simple dish has evolved and the one on the menu is on my version of butter chicken.” Many things on the menu are recreated similarly. “I think it is very difficult to do simple things well and to serve Indian cuisine to Indians is not an easy thing to do. It’s not something you can get away with easily.”
Photos: Chef Amninder Sandhu
For the love of indigenous ingredients
Chef Sandhu’s Bawri ticks these boxes. She has always been heavy on the use of such regional ingredients, be it in her dishes or her drinks. Ever had ingredients such as the Naga passion fruit, mosambi, and tenga from Assam or even Khasi coriander used in a cocktail? You’ll find it on Bawri’s menu. As a chef, Sandhu feels that coming across a cool ingredient makes work much more fun. “For me,” she says, “it is things from the Northeast because I know that even though they are Indian ingredients, they are not necessarily looked at as Indian and that’s the reason I think I feel the need to put them on my menu and celebrate it.” She uses ingredients such as mejenga guti or khorisa which is fermented bamboo shoots, or the now slightly popular gutti aloo. “I don’t just use rare ingredients for the sake of it. These are ingredients that I have seen growing up and want more people to enjoy and know about them. When I put gutti aloo on the menu, I was also able to set up a supply chain for a farmer in a remote location in the Northeast and I felt good because it goes beyond just the food,” she says.
Lately, a lot of chefs and restaurants seem to be using indigenous ingredients as if it’s a trend. “It’s a good thing,” she says, “We mustn’t complain about a trend of this nature. It’s great that it’s happening and more chefs should do it.”
A gasless approach to cooking
Another ‘cool’ thing that Chef Sandhu is now synonymous with is gasless cooking. “It’s a very organic and intuitive kind of cooking,” she starts, “you have to heavily rely on the look and feel of the result.” She explains how, unlike a stove, you don’t have regulators where you can crank up or cut the heat immediately and this technique comes from years of cooking. She recalls how the first time she tried frying onions on an angeethi [fireplace] and burnt herself. She admits that this is not an easy task and has learned this technique over time.
Just like any other profession, upskilling is necessary. Chef Sandhu is quick to share the new technique she has been trying. “I recently started cooking in an underground barbeque pit at my restaurant Palaash in Tipai.” Palaash was the second outpost after the success of Bawri in Goa. “I’m pretty kicked about it and was happy with the result,” she says with a smile. “We cooked a whole raan in an underground pit—just how it’s done in Rajasthan—and it feels like magic. You put raw meat and it comes fully cooked, falling off the bone, and tastes amazing.”
Chef Amninder Sandhu with her business partner Sahil Sambhi. Photos: Chef Amninder Sandhu
Blast from the past
It is clear while chatting with Chef Sandhu that she holds her family, her time spent in Assam, and her culture very close to her heart. People say that the environment you grow up in, often instills what you do when you’re older and Chef Sandhu’s love for food and using the angeethi can be tracked to her childhood. “I am very grateful for the kind of childhood I had,” she says. She fondly thinks of her memories as she narrates them at her newest outpost of Bawri. “We went for picnics in the dense forest and my mum had a kitchen garden. She also had a tandoor in her backyard and an angeethi,” she shares. We have not been to Palaash but from the description, we can guess it may resemble her mum’s garden because Chef Sandhu does have her kitchen garden in Tipai. “I remember seeing her cook lentils overnight on the angeethi, make the saag, and even baingan bharta. When we had parties, we would use the tandoor to make kebabs.”
Photos: Chef Amninder Sandhu
The picture painted in my mind as she explained was so vivid that I wish I could have experienced this. She recalls that her mum would grow whatever ingredients she couldn’t easily find in Jorhat, in Assam in her kitchen garden. “She would always try and up the game as far as cooking was concerned and I think that helped me look at food differently.” She shares, “besides the picnics, I have very vivid childhood food memories. My mama would teach us how to catch fish and whatever we would catch, we would stuff it in an open fire and cook it.” Perhaps, this is where the passion for open-fire and gasless cooking comes from.
“Although I’m a Sardarni, I have grown up eating smoked pork and a lot of fish but I also enjoy my butter chicken,” she laughs. “My way of looking at Indian cuisine was never just North Indian but a wide range of things.” However, she admits that her favourite dish is a dry-aged steak. “I can eat steaks every day.” Besides regional Indian, Chef Sandhu has a soft spot for classic French cooking and Thai flavours.
Inspiration and future plans
Chef Sandhu shares that her source of inspiration has not changed over the years. Imagine being labelled as, ‘The Girl with Gold in her Fingers’ by someone who has been an inspiration all your life. Chef Sandhu’s life may have come circle when British chef and restaurateur Marco Pierre White gave her this label in 2019. “I’m a huge fan of Marco Pierre White, Thomas Keller, and Nancy Silverton—the legendary old-school chefs—whom I look up to.”
Chef Sandhu plans on taking Bawri internationally and believes that there has been a shift in how Indian cuisine is looked at worldwide. She says that many restaurants are finally celebrating Indian cuisine the way it is meant to be.
