Inside glimpse into chef Amninder Sandhu's new restaurant in Goa

Leni Deni

Few know that Chef Amninder Sandhu moved to Goa in 2008 with the idea to ‘retire'. It was a knee-jerk reaction from a burnout that had resulted from having opened six restaurants back to back for a private company in Mumbai.

"That susegad lasted all of one week. I started losing my mind while doing nothing. I was ready to get back into the kitchen," she laughs. During that time, Sandhu took cooking lessons from an 88-year-old Goan woman and mastered her curries - cafreal, xacuti, sorpotel, vindaloo et all. Sixteen years on, she has launched a regional Indian cuisine restaurant, Bawri, partnering with co-founder Sahil Sambhi at Assagaon - the sleepy town that adopted city dwellers looking for an ‘escape' during the lockdown, and that is now peppered with restaurants and bars. Spread across 10,000 square feet and demarcated by a koi fish pond, it shares space with VietNom, a Vietnamese brand that Sambhi has been running in Delhi for the past four years. "For Bawri, we've stuck to the Goan vibe and used landscaping and big plants to create cosy corners. We wanted a floating cabana for visitors to savour Indian khana sitting cross-legged like we have all grown up eating," he adds.

Sahil Sambhi and Amninder Sandhu

Our sprint from the car into the venue - designed like a coastal cottage with an 18 feet canopy - ends in a flower petal shower welcome. The open kitchen glows with the fire from a josper grill, sigri and a wood-fired oven where Sandhu is carefully plating gucchi stuffed mushroom butter, nachni walnut soil (R899) on a kitschy platter that looks like a tree branch.

"The slow cooking is a carryover from Arth [now closed Indian restaurant in Khar], but it is not fully open fire. Certain challenges were to be dealt with - getting the team ready to work in the touch kitchen, high costs, having a well-powered exhaust," she confesses. But the chutney is still made on the silbatta, and the masalas are handpounded, she points out.

Next to the kitchen, head mixologist Sanchayan Jana mans the bar programme with a Coast to Coast concept taking flavour and ingredient inspiration from the coasts of India. Our experience begins on a high note with a round of drinks that play a practised jugalbandi with the small plates. Smocacola (R675) is not for the weak hearted. Vodka is spiked with guntur chilli and a vanilla reduction made with the region's 100-year-old local artos cola. An easy-to-nurse drink is gin-based leni-deni (Rs 675) with coconut feni, coconut whey and oxidised kokum port. Our favourite is kaapi cool (R675) - aged rum, karavali salt, soy caramel and long pepper.

Stuffed Gucchi

We note that Sandhu's cooking has adapted to new-age eating styles. The navalkol or kohlrabi plays salad (Rs 440) with beet and citrusy pomelo, while the locally thriving breadfruit, a lesser-known cousin of the jackfruit, gets a pathar ka gosht treatment, and is served like a crispy bhajia (Rs 395). Thecha potatoes (Rs 350) spiced with Coorg green chillies are stuffed with cheese to balance the fire. The dance continues between signatures and innovations. The good-old kakori kebab (Rs 665) and mutton nihari found the expected nods. The dish to reckon with is wild mango curry served with noolputtu or iddiyappams (Rs 575), a version of curry that Sandhu had tasted in Coorg. The ripened ghota mangoes used in the curry grow on the property. The addition of tamarind adds a sour tinge to the curry served with mango seeds.

The new Sandhu signatures include baby palak and grilled baingan salad (Rs 440) that comes on a bed of dahi and is topped with pear, tomatoes, cucumber, imli and textured with macadamia nuts. The Mangalorean yetti dosa with prawn curry (Rs 755) that has been soured with Kudampuli or Malabar tamarind is an untampered regional presentation, along with tiger prawns (Rs 899) that are roasted in the josper and whitewashed with rechado butter. The serradura ice cream sandwich (Rs 350) is infused with nostalgia with Marie biscuit, cream and condensed milk. Sandhu admits that she cannot curate a menu without butter chicken. "We don't have to ignore it to pull up other dishes. Our gravy is cooked for six hours and we semi-cook the meat in the tandoor, bast it and cook it again. It is served with a special Bawri naan made of red chillies and garlic."

Wild Mango Curry

Are local Goans enjoying the North India food, we ask. "Just the way someone in Delhi enjoys Goan prawn curry, the residents here are savouring the menu. Culinary borders have long collapsed. There are so many people from Mumbai and Delhi who have settled here. The visibility here is wider than in those two metros" says Sandhu. Come August, it is homecoming for Sandhu when Bawri launches in BKC. "That is my real homecoming and I am most excited about it. There is nothing like Mumbai anywhere in the world because of its people. Over the years, many have written me off. But this ‘bawri' is not going anywhere!" she signs off.

Food footprint

In the lockdown, Sandhu launched delivery kitchen Ammu in Pune and Mumbai (currently being relocated), and a terrace bar and kitchen called Nora in Pune. For Tipai, an upcoming wildlife luxury outpost in Pandharkawada, Sandhu has created an ambitious chef plan to curate a hyper-locally sourced and indigenously prepared menu for guests on individual preferences.