Chef Amninder Sandhu: 'Bawri means to love something madly. For me, it’s my love for regional Indian food'

Chef Amninder Sandhu and some of the regional food spread at her restaurant Bawri, in Goa.

Amninder Sandhu is no ordinary chef. “The girl with gold in her fingers” (that’s what legendary chef Marco Pierre White called her) continues to push boundaries of regional Indian food with her unquenchable curiosity and a profound interest in reviving lost recipes. After creating the first gas-free kitchen in the country at Mumbai’s Arth, Sandhu went on to conquer international platforms with The Final Table, a Netflix series, breached new frontiers with a comfort Indian delivery brand Ammu and even launched a terrace bar and kitchen in Pune named Nora. In spite of her extraordinary accomplishment, this diminutive, unassuming chef allows the cuisine to be the star, not herself.

At her newest restaurant Bawri in Goa, Sandhu creates beautiful yet simplistic dishes squeezing every ounce of flavour from carefully selected ingredients. But more importantly, She experiments with flavours and aromas and brings dishes that reveal themselves gradually through each bite.

Bawri, Amninder Sandhu and Sahil Sambhi's latest venture.

Excerpts from an interview:

Bawri is a vernacular word for crazy. What’s the crazy idea behind Bawri?

In my career, I have hit rock bottom many a time. My restaurants and businesses have shut down. But I have always managed to bounce back only because of my craft. I am obsessed with it. It’s not easy being a chef. You have to love it very sincerely to show up everyday. And it’s far from glamourous. Bawri means to love something madly and it can be anything. For me, it’s this love for regional Indian food.

Bawri in Goa is a celebration of regional Indian cooking.

Where did it all start for you?

It happened quite late when I was 21. I was studying Life Sciences at Sophia College in Mumbai. There was a small hot plate in our common area and I used to make basic things like scrambled eggs and instant noodles. But I would add things to it and people in the hostel would always rave about it. In fact, it was my roommate Shatarupa who first suggested that I should become a chef. I just laughed it off saying ‘this is not how you become a chef.’ But I had a change of heart and mind when I met her Hotel Management friends from Aurangabad. They were all so well-groomed and excited about their life after the degree. Some were even travelling abroad to work. It was all very impressive while I was spending my day extracting DNA, peering into a microscope, not knowing what the future held. My option was to do an MSc and then a PhD and be a nerd all my life. But I always knew I was not cut out to do any breakthrough research or invent things. I hated everything about my course. I remember the exact moment I decided to become a chef. Like it happens in the movies, I was looking out of the large window in our lab on the sixth floor and I said to myself that ‘I will become a chef.’ I then got the prospectus from IHM Aurangabad, circled the fees (it was an expensive course) and sent it to my father. That’s how it all started and there has been no looking back since then.

What are your childhood food memories?

I grew up in a small town called Jorhat in Assam. There were no fancy ingredients in the market. So, my mum used to grow them in our kitchen garden. She would do sculpted cakes, gyozas and had many ovens, cook books, tools, fancy chef’s knives, tandoor, angeethi, etc. I remember enjoying picnics in the Deomali forest in Arunachal Pradesh with our mama. He taught us how to catch fish, stuff it into a bamboo and throw it onto an open fire. As a child I saw him poach eggs in water and the three year old me thought it was magic.

Thecha Potatoes

Your menus always go beyond butter chicken to include dishes like gutti aloo (chickpea-sized potatoes), bamboo smoked mutton, Manipuri black rice dosa, thecha potatoes… What’s the kind of research that goes into menu selection and how do you ensure that every region in India is fairly represented?

I started travelling for recipes, techniques and nuances of Indian cuisines early on in my career. Before launching Bawri I travelled to Coorg and had a beautiful wild mango curry at Divya Madaiah’s home. I decided to put a similar curry on the Bawri menu using mangoes from the tree on our property in Goa. So I put dishes on the menu that I have enjoyed eating. The best approach is to cook like you are going to eat that meal.

But why Goa? Isn’t it already saturated with restaurants?

The venue was chosen by co-founder Sahil Sambhi. But I feel Goa is a great market to launch a brand as people from all over the country come to Goa. So your exposure is immediately a lot bigger. When people come to Goa for a holiday they are very relaxed and have more time to explore things in detail. A chef driven Indian restaurant makes a lot of sense in Goa. I see a huge demand for Indian cuisine here.

Slow-cooked Tarbooza

How and where do you seek constant inspiration for your dishes?

It comes from various things and from places I least expect it. Sometimes it’s just a conversation with someone who says ‘my grandmother used to make a dish and it’s the real deal’. I then meet the grandmother and learn it from her. I learnt the basics of Goan cooking from an 88 year old aunty. She taught me how to make xacuti, cafreal, prawn curry, vindaloo, etc. I also learn from my mother-in-law and my mum. This time when my mum came visiting she made a tamatar ki chutney which was simply mind-blowing. She made it with mustard and ginger. But sadly, my mother is a disaster when it comes to sharing recipes. I have to literally interrogate her like the FBI! A lot of my inspiration also comes from nature because of Assam. My dream is to live on a farm – just like I lived in my childhood.

Chef Amninder Sandhu with co-founder Sahil Sambhi at Bawri, Goa.

According to data as many as 61 per cent of independently operated restaurants fail within three years of opening. Why is that?

There are multiple factors responsible. My experience is that people who have the money, have no clue how to run a restaurant. But they will still want to call the shots. This is the number one reason for a lot of restaurants to fail. Consistency is another issue. You may serve someone nine times and get it spot on, nine times. But the guest will only remember the one time you got it wrong. These days there are many options for people to jump from one restaurant to another. You have to constantly reinvent and stay on top of the game. Restaurant don’t run on their own, you have to work at it every single day. At the end of the day, I feel chefs are wired differently. Dan Barber said it in Chef’s Table Season 1: Chefs are the kind of people who enjoy a little bit of abuse and torture.

Naga Crispy Pork Salad

Why does Indian food not get the respect it deserves?

Indians don’t take pride in our own things. The attitude is that ‘this is home food, why should I eat this in a restaurant?’. Even our chefs are so influenced by the west. They come back and make their restaurant look Nordic. But we are not a Nordic country. Then they will wear those fancy aprons and t-shirts and do tasting menus which are very influenced. Even when they do Indian cooking the backbone is always western cooking with Indian ingredients added. Sitting down and eating with your hands is frowned upon. But when you visit a Japanese restaurant in Japan they make you eat their food their way. Japanese cuisine is the most popular cuisine in the world. And they never modified it for the world. Indians never accept anything till the West tell us to. Look at Fab India which was founded by an American. We always had it, but didn’t know what to do with it. Now we love it. It’s also because they structure it differently and make it user friendly. Take the tandoor for instance. I feel it’s still stuck in the past. No one has put in the effort to make it user friendly so that it’s still a tandoor and not a Weber Grill. My American friends prefer to cook Japanese at home over an Indian meal as the spices are very intimidating and there are too many steps involved. Our cuisine is not well structured and documented.

Amninder Sandhu working the tandoor.

Lastly, is there a book on the horizon?

I want to write two books – one on open fire cooking and the other book on breaking down spices and making it more user friendly. I don’t know when. But the last thing I want to leave behind on this earth is a Indian equivalent of Larousse Gastronomique.