We are what we eat.
A restaurateur for House of Dal, my heritage takes me back to the lanes of flower stalls and scents of Jalebi-Rabdi from every second Halwai ki dukan. But we resisted. Because home cooked food was always, much tastier and fueled us children, with energy to be tempted all day.
There aren’t enough colours to justify our food. But as I grew up, I began reading and hearing about dishes modifying our home cooked dal. Food was being reinvented. Or maybe, history was going back to its villages.
Dal became Dal Bukhara and as Vir Sanghvi said, Bukhara dates from a different era.
Recreating the childhood storybook vision of a kitchen, with black pots and pans, a huge Handi and a perpetually burning fire, there was just one person missing, mother cooking for us.
Our chef decided to recreate those memories, while not replacing mother, but becoming more than what we see a chef as. He became a visionary. Adding kindness and taking care for long hours, of the pot on coals, he is the hand in glove for bringing home-cooked food to people in United Arab Emirates, Dubai.