Chef Amninder Sandhu’s Bawri in Goa is all about age-old recipes and traditional cooking techniques

Amninder Sandhu, a hotel management trainee, has a passion for cooking. She has worked in renowned restaurants, including Arth, and recently opened Bawri in Goa, a regional Indian restaurant that pays homage to old-age-old recipes using long-lost techniques to extract bold, complex flavours from locally-sourced ingredients. Bawri's menu includes recipes from Amninder's childhood, passed down by friends and family, and uses pure ghee, cold-pressed coconut and olive oils, antibiotic-free poultry, greens and spices from their origins. Amninder also employs more women in her work force, and is constantly learning and evolving as a chef.

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.  

So it was with a sense of déjà vu that Amninder recently opened the doors to her latest venture, Bawri, in Goa’s trendy Assagao, along with founder Sahil Sambhi. The regional Indian restaurant pays homage to age-old recipes using long-lost techniques to extract bold, complex flavours from locally-sourced ingredients.

It goes far beyond what she ever did at her previous restaurant. For one, Amninder has evolved as a chef in the years that Arth downed its shutters. Bawri’s menu has recipes from her childhood as well those that have been passed down to her by friends and family. Gutti Aloo, a she serves at Bawri, has its roots in her childhood. “Growing up in the Northeast, we used to eat sukhi gutti aloo sabji with dal chawal. Here, I wanted to do something more with it and so, I cook it with an almond gravy and serve it with a dahi ki khamiri roti which is a recipe from the streets of Old Delhi,” she says.

However, procuring ingredients and manpower has proved to be a bit of a challenge in Goa, not to mention the flies that gather during the rains. “I am constantly learning every day and whatever I learn, I put that in the menu. It started when I discovered that I am pre-diabetic. I cut out seed oil from my diet and it helped. So, I created a restaurant which is seed-oil free. The idea is to use good produce, clean ingredients, be as organic as possible. I wanted to create a space where you don’t get that heavy, lethargic feeling after eating the food,” she says.

At Bawri, the backbone of her cooking is using pure ghee made with milk from grass-fed cows, cold-pressed coconut and olive oil, antibiotic-free poultry, greens and spices from their origins. Simi Batra, who supplies northeastern artisanal ingredients, brings her gutti aloo, whereas Divya Madaiah from Coorg supplies green cardamom, black pepper and kachampuli (souring agent) to them. The free-range chicken comes from a local vendor and grass fed cow’s ghee and cold pressed coconut oil from Organic India. Some of their ingredients such as Manipuri black rice, Kaaji lemon, fermented bamboo shoots, Mejenga guti, king chillies and teas are sourced from the Northeast. “We get our filter coffee from Coorg and Rajgira atta and Khapli atta from Pune. We use heavy-bottomed copper utensils and sil battas. Slow cooking has always been my vibe,” she states.