“I come from quite a diverse family, if I may say. My mother is from Tirunelveli and my father comes from the Lucknow. Born and brought up in Hyderabad, I had a simple childhood with an opportunity of getting the best of both worlds.
Just like any other food enthusiast, my love for food happened during my childhood while watching food and travel shows on TV. I got hooked to Master Chef show and there was no looking back. The show opened a pandora’s box of unheard ingredients, cuisines, and recipes for me. I was inspired to see how people chose to shift from their high-paying jobs and create a world around food. The show did play an essential role in what I am today.
It is only when I was fourteen, I got my hands onto some serious cooking. Till then, I used to look at my granny cook and enjoy every bite of what she’d make. The one dish that still makes my heart smile is ‘Tenguzhal’. It is a besan-based mixture, my granny would make whenever she is in town. Oh my god! How can I forget about her Mysore paak. It is something I can never say no to. Apart from such comfort food, a dish that can make me salivate is palak paneer (haha). When I learnt that food is more than just eating, I started to spend a little more time in the kitchen. I would help mom with dishes like dal, rasam, and of course with the meal prep.
A lot of people can cook but what matters the most is if they are able to convey a story or an emotion through their food. Holding on to this thought, I started working on something different and unique such as a Neapolitan-style pizza. A diner might give me ten reasons as to why they wouldn’t want to order this dish, but I can give them a hundred reasons as to why they should give it a try. It was important for me to take my diner through the journey of this dish and the story behind it.
Pandemic did take a huge toll on all of us. Work from home was the fad but for someone whose kitchen is his office, the scene was different. After understanding the pulse of the public, I learned that they were looking for some comforting food. That is when I catapulted a comfort cloud-based kitchen. I was also contemplating if home based cloud kitchen could offer the same comfort as a conventional cloud kitchen. To my surprise, people did seem to love the home based cloud kitchen concept. There were days when I would receive an order for 10 pizzas or multiple boxes of brownies from a single customer. The journey of a home-based cloud kitchen has taught me to take risks and to value every penny in my wallet and also to be open to every opportunity that comes my way.”