Mumbai Food: The insider's guide to home chefs

Home chefs

The aroma of fish curry wafts through the small conference room. The air is filled with the sound of tiffins being opened and their contents emptied on plates. Serviettes are passed around to mop up spillage and ensure the food doesn't spread too far on the white plates. Once ready, each home chef proudly holds aloft a specialty dish of theirs.

Gitika Saikia with Fiddlehead Fern And Pork Stir Fry

Think of it as a new symbol of revolution in the food industry. Starting tomorrow, four home chefs - Kalpana Talpade, Madhumita Pyne, Tejal Choksi and Gitika Saikia - will open their homes to diners for a pop-up, offering a banquet of their famous dishes. They're part of the Home Chef Revolution (HCR), a new property started by The Bohri Kitchen (TBK) with events website Insider and media enterprise Only Much Louder (OML).

Madhumita Pyne with Spicy Rohu Fish Curry. Pics/Pradeep Dhivar

"We wanted to create a community of passionate people willing to take a chance to take their brand forward," says Munaf Kapadia from TBK.

On a plate
"Authenticity is in. The common diner doesn't just want to eat good food, s/he wants the experience - the stories behind the dishes, knowledge of the ingredients and cooking styles, and where the ingredients have been sourced from," adds Shreyas Srinivasan, director, OML.

Tejal Choksi with Cold Aubergine Salad and Steamed Fish

Each chef will focus on a different cuisine. Saikia will serve up food from the North-East; Talpade, a Pathare Prabhu meal; Choksi will be doing Cantonese dishes and Pyne, a Bengali feast. The pop-ups will be hosted at their residence and will include a full-course meal.

Prawns In Garlic by Kalpana Talpade

You can learn about the Pathare Prabhu community and how their recipes have been passed down generations from Talpade of Kalpana's Kitchen. She will be serving an authentic and fish-filled thali.

"At my pop-ups, I don't just serve the food. What keeps customers coming back are stories behind the dishes and where I source ingredients and whether these dishes can be prepared with what's available in the city," says Saikia from Gitika's PakGhor.
She will cook up a five-course meal that includes the delicately balanced Gahori Dhekia Bhaji (fiddlehead fern and pork stir fry) and an Arunachali dish, Murgi Masala Paat (chicken with bamboo shoot and herbs). Saikia gets most of her ingredients - bhut jolokia, bamboo shoots, black rice - from her home in Assam. "For instance, the fiddlehead fern is a vegetable found only during monsoon and it goes well with pork, hence my dish."

Pyne, better known as the Insomniac Cook, started out by making and selling artisanal jams and sauces, besides hosting people at her home in Malad for meals and doing pop-ups. "We Bengalis are very particular about the food we eat and serve. You don't have too many places offering traditional Bengali food, most of it has been amped up. I intend to use old recipes to
create an authentic Bengali meal," she says.

On her part, Choksi wants to educate people about authentic Cantonese food. "Even today, I get calls for Manchurian and Jain Cantonese food but I turn them down. How can I cook a dish without using aromatics and herbs?" she asks. She started Cantonese Kitchen three years back and hosts sit-down dinners and events in the city. "Cantonese food is delicious and healthy."

The way ahead
"The single biggest thing that has happened in the food industry in the last two years is that home chefs are now a brand in themselves. They have an identity, a logo and even regular customers. They've made food a career," says Kapadia. To this end, HCR hopes to further this brand of home chefs, through collaborations, curated pop-ups, and in the future, a possible festival.
"The home chef scene in the city has changed a lot in the last two years. There are newer players stepping in, offering more variety to customers. This is going to become a more organised industry in the coming years," adds Saikia.