Shagun Mehra

A Culinary Chameleon

Hotelier, chef, sommelier and style diva, Shagun Mehra welcomes us into her stunning Goa home with a finger-licking feast.

Text: Fareeda Kanga

Shagun Mehra is waxing eloquent about the guavas in her garden as we are ensconced in her charming home in Socorro, Goa. A few minutes later she emerges with a refreshing concoction that pleases the palette and the eye.

Dressed to kill, this stylish single mom was born to be a chef. Back in Vadodara, she belongs to fifth generation hoteliers, and growing up she observed her mum prepare a daily, homemade dabba for her dad inspite of access to their hotel kitchen. “I think the seeds of my fondness for cooking were sown as my mother was a consummate cook and watching her cook for my dad and the family inspired me to follow suit.”
Shagun honed her culinary craft formally at Switzerland’s renowned Ecole Les Roches, and fine-tuned her culinary skills at Paris’ Le Cordon Bleu.

Today she is the Culinary Director of two amazing boutique hotels under the Coco Shambhala umbrella located in Goa and Sindhudhurg. At the Goa property, Shagun and her partner, Giles Knapton have designed four bespoke and sumptuous tropical houses set in a jungle style garden. Winning numerous awards for design and service including ‘India’s best Boutique Hotel’ by Conde Nast Traveller and Top 25 Hotels in India on Trip Advisor.

But what makes her stand out as a chef is her ability to combine flavours and textures using the simplest of ingredients and techniques to create dishes that will literally blow your mind!
“I inherently hate recipes that require sourcing fancy high-end ingredients that are imported and processed. For me it’s about freshness and adapting our bounty of local ingredients to a recipe rather than merely following cookie cutter style of cooking,” she avers. So her melt-in-the-mouth ravioli is a marriage of fenugreek and cottage cheese instead of Ricotta.

To further heighten this philosophy, neither of the two Coco Shambhala hotels have a restaurant on site. Meals are served in the villa and one simply phones the kitchen to place an order for food just like the daily fare at Shagun’s home which is always based on what’s seasonal  and fresh in the nearby market. Shagun toys with a snapper and presents it with home ground masalas accompanied by a crunchy ridge gourd and pomegranate salad whilst we gaze languorously out at the river bed adjoining her home sipping curry leaf nimbu pani.

Adding to her culinary achievements, she recently completed a training at the Basque Culinary Center in San Sebastian (which is said to be the Mecca for Avant Garde Gastronomy) and it winds its way back in her menu.  Another feather in her cap was the opportunity to represent India by ICEX Spain. While in Spain, Shagun cooked a 4-hand dinner with top Barcelonian chef Xavier Pellicer. The dinner was an Indian inspired meal using Spanish produce and was featured by La Vanguardia as being a huge success. The theme was coastal Indian flavours using local Spanish produce.” Spain was an eye-opener. Their food philosophy is all about respecting even the simplest ingredients and focusing on bringing its own flavours forward.”

Shagun’s repertoire of Semolina coated turmeric and ginger squid with saffron mayonnaise and Tapioca Kheer with cardamom and Spanish organic strawberries was a major hit. A fondness for wine which she pairs beautifully with her food is another forte. “India doesn’t have strong wine-drinking culture, and there is a lack of knowledge when it comes to selection. I realised that there was a lack of education amongst F&B staff and guests about wine.” Shagun co-founded the first accredited Wine School in India and has personally trained top hotel, airline and restaurant staff across the country on the finer points of food and wine.

Recently verified on Instagram, Shagun has a huge fan following not just for her recipes but her take on life (she’s single mom to Mira–her greatest creation!) her innate fashion sense and amazing stylised table decor to name a few things.  Home for Shagun is a platform to showcase her amazing culinary and design skills - she hosts an impromptu sundowner for us and invites a few of Goa’s crazy creative bunch including fashion designer Carolina Paez, Photographer Maria Phillipose, Minal Bhandary and Radhika Shah-Timblo of the buzzing new hotspot, Café Mira (Goa’s answer to Swati Snacks) to name a few.
Dinner for us that evening is a menu as eclectic as her guest list;  bottle gourd with toasted sesame and sesame oil, followed by curry leaf sungta (butter and curry leaf poached prawns, garlic slivers, topped with peanuts), a ravioli of fenugreek and cottage cheese (with curry burnt butter and roasted peanuts) and lastly coconut and jaggery pancakes (with a rum and orange glaze).

“I love going out of my way to create memories through food and dining. My other responsibilities include creating new and exciting experiences, making it bespoke for each guest.” In addition to being named one of the top 5 craftspeople in India by The Luxury Edition of Fortune Magazine, her love for food led her to host and feature in a variety of shows for networks such as Ping, Living Foodz, Arré and India Food Network.

Shagun is incredibly driven and enthusiastic about wildlife and animals, particularly conservation and care, which led her to co-found the Ear to the Wild Foundation and she works with the Wild Life Institute of India to save elephants from train collision deaths. She is also working with the Goa Forest Department to arrest turtle and dolphin deaths. She believes in giving back to the planet and making her life useful towards a better future for the generations to come.

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