If her food were like her music, we’d all be on a sugar rush. When Love Today Hai Nahin Asaan and Hoo Halla Hoo crested the charts on the wave of Indian pop music that provided an alternative soundtrack to Bollywood for Indian youth in the nineties, they were heady, syrupy confections whose tunes burrowed insidiously into your brain — and stayed there.
As Anaida embraces yet another career — after a foray into art several years ago and training as a yoga teacher more recently — she hews much closer to her roots. Perhaps it’s because, at least to those who aren’t formally trained, cooking and serving food is a cultural expression as much as it is about emotional satisfaction.
“I was 16 when I started out. I didn’t speak Hindi and I wasn’t supported to do my thing,” she tells Gulf News tabloid!. “So when this project came about, I insisted on keeping it authentic.”
Now that she’s tasted success in this new venture, she’s eager for more. Though she isn’t a formally trained chef, her name and achievements so far, as well as her work in hospitality, have seen her approached to open restaurants in Delhi and Dubai.
“The pop-up in Delhi went through the roof and led to quite a few restaurant offers. I chose not to go with them, but there is another offer from Dubai that is exciting. It’s based on my own idea of creating food based on a theme,” she tells us. “The idea is to create food and to share dishes that have stories.”
She reveals it would play in the fine dining space and would take another year to open. Expect it to have a strong art element, and in some way, tie into new-age trends and beliefs (“There are energy-work related components that go towards cooking in my world.”).
This article has been edited from its original source.
