How Amninder Sandhu Became India¡¯s Most Prolific and Celebrated Chef

As a three-year-old, Amninder Sandhu witnessed ¡°magic¡± when she saw her uncle cook eggs in water. Little did she know that she would carry a little bit of that magic into her prolific career as a chef. Born in a North Indian Sikh family, and raised amid the lush greenery of North East India, Amninder Sandhu is among India¡¯s most celebrated chefs. Along with Assagao¡¯s Bawri, which looks like a whimsical tropical retreat and is booked out months in advance, Sandhu is the force behind another exciting new restaurant, Palaash, located inside Maharashtra's Tipeshwar Forest.

This might be an exhilarating time for Sandhu, but her list of accolades has accrued over the years. And she seems to have worked at a manic pace to achieve them. She was accorded the Best Chef (Lady) award at the National Tourism Awards in 2016 and went on to win Chef Of The Year at Times Food Awards 2019. She represented India on Netflix¡¯s The Final Table and was also a guest judge on Masterchef India¡¯s Season 6. But the achievement she is proudest of is Arth, the first gas-free kitchen in the country that she created and conceptualised. It was awarded Restaurant of the Year by World on a Plate, and she received the accolade from her hero Marco Pierre White, who labelled her, ¡°the girl with gold in her fingers¡±.

Food at Palaash

Growing up in Jorhat in Assam, food was always an integral part of Sandhu¡¯s childhood. Her uncle would take her sister and her into the dense forest for picnics, and teach them to catch fish, stuff it in bamboo, and cook it over an open flame. Her mother grew in her kitchen garden, what she could not buy at the market. ¡°My mum threw large parties. And my sister had just three cake tins, but she would make sculpted cakes in the shape of prams, footballs, and pumpkins in the 1980s, long before they became trendy,¡± Sandhu told me.

The Science of Food

Still, Sandhu never imagined she would become a chef until she moved to Mumbai at 17 to study science. ¡°In the hostel, I would make noodles and scrambled eggs for my roommate, Shatarupa, and she would tell me that it tasted very different. She was the first person to tell me that I should be a chef,¡± she said. Meeting hotel management students helped shift her perspective. ¡°I was in the lab on the sixth floor, extracting DNA with a test tube in my hand. I looked out of the window and realised that science was not what I wanted to do,¡± she said. Since then, Sandhu hasn¡¯t looked back.

Science was a thing of the past, and culinary training was Sandhu¡¯s future. After training at the Institute of Hotel Management in Aurangabad, she worked in different parts of the country, including Taj Lands End in Mumbai. That¡¯s when her career kicked into high gear. She joined a standalone company, Manas Hospitality, where she set up six restaurants, a centralised kitchen, and the Mumbai Times Caf¨¦ in Thane and Bandra. She also started The Coast, for which she travelled the coastline to understand the cuisine. It was in 2007 that she truly started travelling to learn about food. ¡°It helped me realise that there are many things about food that can be found out only when you meet people,¡± she said.

Amninder Sandhu

Around that time, Sandhu faced serious burnout ¨C she had done too much too quickly. ¡°I wanted to learn more and throw myself out of my comfort zone,¡± she said. So she packed her bags and headed to Goa where she learnt about local Goan food from an 88-year-old woman. However, she was still very stressed and her mother insisted she come back home. In Jorhat, Sandhu and her brother started a cute 30-seater restaurant that served sculpted cakes, wood-fired pizzas, Indian food and more. ¡°We used the best quality wood to make tables and chairs and we even made our own kitchen equipment. There was no Instagram in 2010, else it would be just such a cool thing,¡± she said.

A Change Of Pace

She ran this restaurant for five years, but eventually, Jorhat proved to be too small. Sandhu was by then in her late 20s and felt that she needed to do more and came back to Mumbai. ¡°I let my team run the restaurant but they just ran it to the ground,¡± she told me. The quality had dropped and she read some reviews online and decided to shut it down.

¡°I was in Mumbai without a job and going through a rough time personally.¡± Sandhu found her way back to Taj Lands End, and decided to reboot Masala Bay, the ¡°tired 13-year-old restaurant¡±. She changed the menu and launched a bunch of promotions, including one that showcased recipes from the granddaughter of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. ¡°She shared her family heirloom recipes with me, which had never been in the public eye before. When she would talk me through the recipes, she would always insist on cooking over an open flame,¡± Sandhu said. The concept stayed with her, and she made a mental note that her next restaurant would not use any gas.

With the spotlight firmly on Sandhu, India¡¯s first gas-free restaurant Arth was born. The interiors were designed by Gauri Khan. This was a big platform for Sandhu, where she was given full creative freedom to experiment. During her stint at Arth, Sandhu went on to represent India at The Final Table, a Netflix series that allowed her to travel all over the world in 2019.

Food at Palaash

After Arth, and running a cloud kitchen for two years in a world grappling with Covid, Sandhu realised there was a new-found appreciation for eating out. Now a proper celebrity chef, she launched Bawri in Goa¡¯s tony suburb Assagao, earlier this year. And it¡¯s a gamble that seems to be paying off well. Thanks to a smart influencer marketing campaign, the restaurant is already on Goa¡¯s must-visit lists, all within four months of starting operations.

In The Spotlight

Bawri is an ode to heirloom, regional Indian recipes, where Sandhu claims to use techniques that are on the verge of being lost. The ingredients are locally sourced to complement a menu that has been crafted with recipes from family and friends. At Bawri, you can find winners like bheja masala with Manipuri black rice dosa and Kakori kebab served with a traditionally ground silbatta chutney. ¡°At Bawri, I don¡¯t do what anyone else is doing. I don¡¯t even follow my colleagues on Instagram because I don¡¯t want to be influenced by what they are doing,¡± Sandhu insisted. ¡°I only do what makes sense to me at that point and I feel that is the kind of restaurant Goa needs.¡±

About eight months before she launched Bawri, Sandhu met Keyur Joshi, the founder of Tipai by Wildlife Luxuries, who gave her free rein to create whatever she wanted at Palaash. An outdoor dining space, Palaash ticks all the right boxes: It is a sustainable space, run by women from the local village. ¡°I dream of a day when these women will walk up on stage and receive an award for being among the top 50 restaurants in India,¡± she said. Palaash¡¯s culinary philosophy is rooted in local and homegrown produce, natural ingredients, gasless cooking, and organically grown produce. It features mouthwatering dishes like maas ke sooole with marrow butter and khatta meetha kashiphal with panch phoron to name a few.

Food at Palaash

With so many achievements at such a young age, Sandhu believes that the F&B industry needs to have a tightly-knit community of women chefs who can uplift each other. ¡°At Palaash, I have noticed that the women are very consistent, once they get the techniques right.¡±

While her involvement with these restaurants will continue, Sandhu hopes to write the Indian equivalent of Larousse Gastronomique, an encyclopedia of French gastronomy, someday. ¡°To make a difference, you need to be in a position of power and I will work towards that.¡±