The archive
Writing
Essays, culinary research, field notes and arguments in progress.
Food & Opinion
I Hated Tony
On canonisation of Bourdain, and the future he predicted and dreaded.
Food & Culture
The Perfect Last Bite
On meat, rice, sibling theft and the small arithmetic by which we arrange the end of a meal
Recipes & Technique
Big Mac Sauce Recipe
A professional-kitchen Big Mac sauce recipe made with Dijon mustard, La Costeña chipotle paste, smoked paprika, shallots and cornichons. Makes about 1.3 litres.
Food & Culture
Tujhko mirchi lagi toh me kya karu
On raw onion, chasers and the small gestures that teach you how a cuisine is actually eaten.
Food & Society
Who Gets the Good Piece?
On family hierarchy, care, scarcity, and what a single piece of food can reveal about the entire table.
Culture & Identity
What the Arab Dads Hear
A Letter from a Cultural Outsider
Culture & Identity
What Did Your Mother Pack?
On tiffins, class, authority, and the small humiliations Indian schools still call discipline.
Personal Essay
Oviinbyrd, of Seasons and Produce
On garde manger, peak-season produce and the first time I held a black truffle.
Kitchen Life
Workplaces as Places of Worship
The worktable, the kitchen station and the espresso bar can become altars when craft is where we pursue purpose.
Culture & Identity
On a Good Eid: Celebration of Life and Death
Across Louisiana and India, communal slaughter becomes an occasion for abundance, remembrance and the uneasy intimacy between life and death.
Restaurants & Places
A Definitive Guide to Ridgeway Plaza
How to eat your way through North America’s strangest, busiest and possibly greatest halal strip mall.
Recipes & Technique
Hyderabadi Dawat-Style Chicken Dum Biryani
Javed Ustad’s original one-handi catering formula: 20 kg chicken, 18 kg rice, a raw-rice centre, three staged extractions and nearly two hours of managed dum.
Personal Essay
A Letter from My 18-Year-Old Self
At eighteen, I mistook Michelin stars for proof. The better gift was permission to outgrow the plan without abandoning the pursuit.
Food & Memory
Ketchup: A Cross-Cultural Nostalgia
Why the condiment we are supposed to outgrow remains the right answer for masala omelettes, anda pulao and fries.
Culture & Identity
Unity in Diversity: A Tale of Four Samosas in Vadodara
Four vendors, one triangle, and the way Vadodara turns a single form into four different arguments about what a samosa can be.
Food & Opinion
Authenticity Is Overrated
Authenticity is a feeling, not a recipe. The better question is whether the food feels honest, tastes good and carries intention.
Kitchen Life
Me and That Goddamned Fire Alarm
A kitchen Western about smoking-hot pans, the law overhead and why a proper sear is worth raising hell for.
Personal Essay
I Got Home by Way of France
France gave me my fundamentals. India is teaching me the volatility, memory and finesse of cooking for real.
Personal Essay
Cooking for One
The strange, exacting and almost devotional freedom of feeding yourself with nobody else’s appetite in the room.
Food & Opinion
Stop Ordering Garlic Naan with Your Curries
Garlic naan is delicious. It is also an overbuilt, double-fat, double-garlic vehicle that has forgotten its job.
Food & Technique
An Onion Is Not Just an Onion
Indian recipes do not call for an abstract onion. They call for a particular sweetness, pungency, texture and way of browning.
Restaurants & Places
I Don’t Want a Michelin Star. I Want What Kallu Has.
On a forty-five-minute sellout in Old Delhi, the limits of fine-dining ambition, and the kind of restaurant I actually want to build.
Kitchen Culture
Seven Times
How kitchen culture teaches people to perform through anxiety, exhaustion and pain—and what that silence can cost.
Culture & Identity
There Is No Border Between Us
They thought they were insulting me. Instead, they gave me a question. And I spent the next twenty years looking for the answer.
Food & Technique
Ghee Is Not Clarified Butter
Before it ever meets a pan, ghee has already undergone culture, fermentation and transformation. Calling it clarified butter erases the point.