Magdelena Arbelaez-Chujfi may only be 2 years old, but she's already quite the jet-setter.
22.12.2023 - 18:35 / cntraveler.com
Ravinder Bhogal was born in Nairobi, is of Indian descent, and lives in London. Rather aptly, the chef and writer refers to Jikoni, her Marylebone restaurant, as a “no-borders kitchen.” The ingredients at Jikoni, which means kitchen in Kiswahili, are seasonal British and the inspiration, global—a happy amalgam of the food memories Bhogal has amassed across many geographies. Here, a crispy aubergine in Sichuan sauce sits comfortably alongside a kale chaat or hummus with sheermal. “Borders don’t belong in kitchens,” she says.
Bhogal’s special sauce, however, is greater than the sum of the ingredients she deftly arranges into each dish. It’s the human connection that sits at the heart of her craft, from the cooking to the serving. “When people arrive at Jikoni, it should feel like coming home,” she says. It isn’t just her customers who return for that, either. On any given day, you wouldn’t be surprised to see chefs like Sami Tamimi, Yotam Ottolenghi, or Danny Meyer, when he's visiting, walk in for a meal and a chat after a shift. Those friendships are reciprocal: During a recent visit to New York to celebrate her new cookbook Comfort and Joy: Irresistible Pleasures from a Vegetarian Kitchen, Bhogal took over part of Meyer’s Gramercy Tavern to churn out a selection of recipes from the book like the flavor-packed curry leaf crumpets with lime pickle butter and a decadent strawberry falooda milk cake topped with crushed pistachios.
The cookbook, Bhogal says, is bound by love, community, and joyful cooking. In it, she writes unequivocally about her influences—memories from her home in Nairobi that her grandfather built; his vegetable allotment from which sprung fresh produce that was a labor of love; and the bustle of communal cooking days in her mother’s kitchen that would enlist a slew of matriarchs who’d sing and chat as they cooked. Those memories, she says, marked the foundation of her work. “Food needs to nourish, to feel like love,” she says. It is this belief that has remained fundamental to her over the years—to the several books and television shows she has to her name—and which Comfort and Joy underlines and celebrates.
Find the full interview below.
“Borders don’t belong in kitchens,” says Ravinder Bhogal, who was born in Nairobi and lives in London.
You say your food is inspired by immigrant cuisine. Can you explain what that term means to you?
I came to England as an immigrant when I was seven years old. I think something common to all immigrant experiences is that you develop this ache, this pining for what you've left behind. You romanticize it, you become nostalgic about it, and you become fiercely protective of it because you want to keep it alive. Whether that's your language, your
Magdelena Arbelaez-Chujfi may only be 2 years old, but she's already quite the jet-setter.
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