A noted celebrity chef today, Dhondy, a graduate of IHM, Aurangabad, who had Chef Sabyasachi Gorai, as her mentor, before she went to London to pursue her masters in culinary, reveals, how cooking with her mother as a child who has been a home chef for the last 25 years set the tone for what she would grow up to be. “My mother was very experimental in the kitchen. She wasn’t making run-of-the-mill dal chawal at home; rather, she would be making a sizzler one day, sometimes a soufflé and the likes. I would be hanging around the kitchen, and would keep tasting whatever she would be cooking. When I was around 10, I helped her ice a cake for the first time and it turned out fabulously. That is also the time when my mother perhaps realized that I wanted to take up cooking professionally.”
Post her education in London, Dhondy came back to join the Olive Group, which was just conceptualising SodaBottleOpenerWala, as the head chef of the restaurant at the age of 23, an uncommon feature in the industry where chefs usually take about 10-15 years before being at the top. “I won’t deny that the first months were difficult as I didn’t have as much experience as the guys working under me. Then, I started bringing in some of my mom and grandmom’s recipes of various Parsi cuisines, essentially, recipes that I had grown up with. And that worked like magic in earning my respect in the kitchen, when all my other methods of bullying and screaming had failed,” she reveals. Talking about the challenges she was faced with, Anahita reveals that training the staff, some of whom are not very literate, and enabling them to understand how exactly you want the dish to turn out can be a big challenge.
Be prepared to work very hard, and choose this profession, only if you are very passionate about food. At the same time, keeping a positive attitude can get more and more women into the kitchen. I hope to be that changemaker.
–Chef Anahita Dhondy
Anahita wears her achievements proudly, but is quick to mention that the onus now is on people like her to get more women to the kitchen. “The kitchen has always been a male-dominated area because of the amount of physical labour involved in it. Women also came in very late because it wasn’t cool to be a bawarchi at that point, as it is now. But with a positive attitude we can sure get more women in this space. It might be difficult, but I hope to be a change-maker. Kitchens are becoming more-friendly. So things are moving, all you have to do is wait,” she says.
On a parting note, Anahita reveals, that India is the middle of a food revolution, and being a successful chef involves very hard work with almost zero work-life balance, something you have to be willing to make peace with. “It is when you are training to be a chef, and doing your internships that you realise how hard it really is. When I was interning with the Taj, I would be up on my feet for 10-12 hours straight, while my friends would be partying… However, what keeps you sane is when you create something or learn a skill perfectly, and receive good feedback.”
