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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.
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 dress, or your culinary heritage. But then as you begin to find your new home, your place in it, and you begin to weave in the influences that are around you. For me, growing up in a densely immigrant area in London, I was lucky enough to be inspired by all these wonderful mini-immigrant economies, whether it was the Korean supermarket or the Turkish food shops. And these were the people who gave me hospitality as I was growing up; we were in and out of their houses, tasting their food—and eventually that influenced the ingredients I like to use and cook with and eat. So I think immigrant food for me is a reconciliation of the old and the new. And in doing that you create something completely new. Jikoni was my way of saying: I am East African, Indian, and British and I can occupy this space of a multitude of identities and languages and culinary experiences.
You actually started out as a writer, but food continues to be a vehicle of storytelling for you. When did you discover that you enjoy telling stories through your food?
I learned very early on that the best place for storytelling was in the kitchen. I think there's something about the act of making food together that makes women in particular very comfortable with each other. Growing up, I saw a lot of therapy going on in the kitchen; when all these women would cook together, it was often not so much about the food, but the stories that went around the prep table. I think food is also a great medium for breaking down boundaries: we are very good at othering each other, as seeing others as strangers, yet when you taste someone's cuisine, you understand something about them.
I've always been very interested in the humanity behind food, and I think behind every plate of food we eat, there is an invisible humanity that is present at our table. And that is the story of the person who planted the seed, the person who nurtured that plant or tended to the animal, or you know, drove the goods to the market. I'm interested in their stories.
The maternal energy you witnessed in the kitchens of your childhood is something you bring up a lot—the power of the female spirit. How has that shaped your craft?
I'm fascinated by women. I'm fascinated by the stories women tell—and also don't tell. You know, I think of women as kind of like Russian dolls. There are layers and layers and then you get the tiny one on the inside, and she remains hidden a lot. No one sees her story. And I think that I am particularly interested in the stories of women from my culture, the stories that have often been very marginalized. I think it's important for us to begin to own our narrative and tell our stories before somebody else tells them badly.
How does this foundational experience of yours contrast with the more masculine energy that prevails in many restaurants? How do you reclaim that space for yourself?
I think I have to just always keep talking about how I grew up and remain authentic to that. I’ve never claimed to be a chef who has worked in kitchens for 30 years. I grew up around women who were experts at what they did, and who didn't get the recognition or get paid for what they were doing. My mother can cook for 50 or 100 people without breaking a sweat. These are intuitive cooks, women with such wisdom, and such exceptional palates. So I've learned from the best and I teach my chefs to cook the way my mother, grandmother, and aunts taught me how to cook, and we keep their memory alive through our food.
Those lessons have seeped into your philosophy around hospitality, too—your book is called Comfort and Joy for a reason.
Hospitality comes above anything, but it starts with your team. If I'm charming to guests but not my team, that's not true hospitality. So I think that idea of hospitality, of how you make someone feel—whether they're a guest at your restaurant, a member of your team, or a supplier supplying to your restaurant—sets a really good culture. The second part of that is the idea of restaurants being places to restore. The word for restaurant comes from the French verb restaurer, meaning “to restore.” There is great power in being able to touch someone or transform their day, through a simple plate of food. There aren't many industries where you feel that immediate effect of touching someone, you know, the way that you do with food. I always say to my team that we have to look at this as a complete privilege. If we're not restoring our guests, if we're not restoring our neighborhood and community, or the world around us, we're not doing our jobs.
In the early days, you'd take your food on the road through pop-ups and residencies. You still travel a lot. How do these travels inform your cooking?
I love to travel and the most exciting thing is discovering food wherever I go. The first thing I do when I get to places is to try and find a local food market. I also like to get into kitchens to try and understand recipes and how things are put together. Recently, I traveled to Oman and went up into these rugged mountains and witnessed the beginning of pomegranate season. The appreciation you develop for these farmers, particularly those working in really difficult terrain—it makes you really appreciate how precious our food is and how miraculous it is—I say this in Comfort and Joy as well. My grandfather was a man who came from meager means. And, you know, he would constantly work on his patch of land and it was his pride and joy. And he would pull things out of the earth and say, look, this is a miracle. Look at the common onion: it has withstood pestilence and bad weather, and yet it consistently finds its way to our kitchens. We’ve become so disassociated from where our food comes from, so it was just really wonderful to be on these pomegranate farms and look at the sacrifice that goes into getting these pomegranates to us. You wouldn't dream of wasting anything if you knew what had gone into it.
Do you work with a lot of farming communities and small producers around the world?
So, one of the most incredible things is that we have an exclusive partnership with a biodynamic farm, which is 15 minutes down the road from the restaurant. They treat the soil with such respect, and the biodiversity on their plot is quite awe-inspiring. You can taste it in the food. But I also think that there's a fine line between supporting local, which you should do as much as possible, and having a responsibility for small producers around the world and their livelihoods. I come from Kenya, and some years ago there was a movement to stop importing Kenyan green beans because of its carbon footprint. I have visited green bean farmers there and when you see how the green-bean dollar has saved people's lives and given them a livelihood and dignity, you have to then weigh up whether it's worth cutting them off completely. If you are okay with taking a jolly to Masai Mara, but you will not eat a Kenyan green bean, it's completely hypocritical.
Back in London, what are some of your favorite restaurants to go to?
One of my favorite London restaurants is called Maison Francois, which I really love. It's such an elegant restaurant and always feels like a good night out. The hospitality is so warm, and the food, really delicious. They always remember your name and where you like to sit. The best thing about it is that they bring out this hulking wooden dessert trolley at the end of your meal with the most intricate patisserie you can imagine. You know, last impressions count, and you're always left with a smile because you just sort of lingered over this beautiful dessert trolley. I love that.
