More than two decades ago, when she was a hotel management trainee at the Taj Culinary School, Amninder Sandhu called her father to complain about the long working hours. “My father only had one thing to say — Ya toh naukri karo, ya nakhre karo. Dono cheezein ek saath nahi chalti (Either work, or complain; the two things don’t go together),” she chuckles.
It is because of this kind of “dangerous training”, as she calls it, and her sincere love for cooking, that Amninder has managed to weather the many storms in her professional life. She had worked as the executive chef for two-and-a-half years in the famed Indian restaurant Arth in Bandra, the city’s first gas-free kitchen at the time, but it shut down in 2020. “I had serious PTSD after Arth shut down for reasons beyond my control. It was heartbreaking for me,” says Amninder. Then her delivery kitchen Iktara, which launched in 2021, ended up closing down as well.
Amninder has cooked for some of the country’s top chefs, including the late Floyd Cardoz who could not get enough of her deomali – pork cooked in bamboo with rice wrapped in turmeric leaves.
