Bringing Basics Back

Chef Anahita Dhondy
Entrepreneur-Chef, Weekend Kitchen

A young chef driven with a purpose – to make consuming food a sustainable endeavour; cooking with all her heart and love for Parsi cuisine and Indian regional ingredients. Anahita is stirring the world of local food, one pot at a time

Interviewed by Shraddha Mishra

Chef Anahita found her love for food and cooking at a very early age. Her mother was a home-cook since over 30 years, even before she was born. She used to cater food and bake cakes and goodies. Fascinated by the work, Anahita loved lending a helping hand to her mother, especially icing and decorating cakes. By the time she was 10 or 12, she made up her mind to get into it professionally. Today, she is a renowned chef who has made a mark for herself in the world of Indian regional cuisine.
"It was a challenging beginning, at least for the first two to three years," says Anahita. A factor that bothered her initially was that being a woman chef, it was difficult to be taken seriously. She firmly believes that in a professional environment, it should not matter one bit whether one is a man or a woman. Questions like, “Will you be able to stand for a long time, handle the hustle?” should be irrelevant as far as the gender of the person is concerned. “You have to constantly keep proving yourself, only then they take you seriously,” she says. But of hardwork and excellence, Anahita has never been afraid.
Always good in studies, she graduated top of her class from IHM, Aurangabad with a BA in Culinary Arts. She went on to acquire a Grande Diplome from Le Cordon Bleu, London. She returned to India to join AD Singh in launching SodaBottleOpenerWala, which soon became popular for some very happening Parsi offerings. Anahita always wanted to do Indian regional cuisine, and what better than her own lineage!
Consuming and using regional, local produce is something Anahita is passionate about. She believes it to be a sustainable practice, something everyone must adopt in their capacity. As a chef and youth icon with the ability to influence many, she strongly advocates sustainable practices in the kitchen. One way she suggests we can all do so is to eat a variety of locally grown foods; it will add good balance to our nutrition and also keep the farmers motivated to produce them, thus maintaining our ecosystem. She advises not to keep using refined oil and to choose out of the several regional oils available to us in mustard and coconut. Zero waste is another practice to follow. Consuming from root to shoot – not wasting the stem of broccoli, for instance, is a healthy lifestyle.
To this end, Anahita is part of a global network that aims at acting towards a sustainable food system. The Chef’s Manifesto brings together chefs to work towards waste-free, planet-friendly practices, celebrating eco-friendly ingredients, protecting the biodiversity and valuing natural resources. At one of their gatherings in London, Anahita cooked a halwa using amaranth and topped it with fresh mango puree. She garnished it with some locally available lavender. Needless to say, everyone loved the innovative recipe and amaranth, a healthy and versatile ingredient, was well-celebrated.
After food, Chef’s happiness lies in travel. She chooses destinations where she can enjoy the cuisine. She loves South East Asia for their food and wine. In the US, she likes visiting New York, San Francisco and Napa. She reminisces the time she cooked in Napa Valley for a week at the Culinary Institute of America, as she tells us about memorable cooking experiences around the globe, including London and Stockholm. "The most memorable," she says, "was the time I cooked for 3000 guests in NY for the Global Citizens event." She had prepared a millet salad, impressing the diners with the ingredient. The multi-tasking, doing every bit on her own and the sheer number of guests made for the most exciting experience.
Back home, in the professional kitchen, too, she is energetic and enjoys the hustle. She is good at firmly leading a team to do their best. She enjoys some lighter moments with them where they play music, crack a joke, share a laugh. This journey, in the kitchens of SodaBottleOpenerWala, that started in 2013, has recently come to an end with Anahita embarking on a new chapter. Together with her mother, Anahita has started the Weekend Kitchen, a delivery-based service taking limited orders for Parsi cuisine and everything that her mom makes best, and everything that they love to eat –– Continental, Italian, too.
The year 2020 ––  the global pandemic and the lockdown –– gave her an unexpected break, where she took a moment’s breath to chalk out broader plans. What she is most excited about, currently, is the upcoming launch of her book with family recipes handed down from one generation to the next. And what else lies ahead in her future? She says, "Wait and watch!"