Born and raised in Abu Dhabi, I’ve been cooking independently since the age of 8 years. My culinary affair began with sneaking cookbooks in between school textbooks and quietly whizzing cupcake batters in the balcony in the middle of the night after everyone would be asleep. I didn’t seek any professional chef training but only self-teaching; trials, errors, hits, misses, practice and passion, nothing else.
In 2010, I moved to America for college and graduated in Business Finance four years later. Through the years, cooking and baking had been a huge part of me, although I realized only after four years of studying finance that I want to make food my career. Very soon I flew down to India and was found queued up in the audition lines for MasterChef India Season 4 and later the winner of the season. MasterChef India marked the beginning of my real-world culinary journey.
Apart from my favorite celebrity chefs, my greatest culinary inspiration has been my mother who is a great cook but not a baker. My mother never baking a cake in my childhood is probably the reason why I find curiosity in the art of creating pastry today. Additionally, being a vegetarian and having won the world’s first vegetarian MasterChef, I undoubtedly enjoy putting my own spin on vegetarian cooking.
The MasterChef journey has taught me more than I had ever imagined. MasterChef as a culinary competition had constantly encouraged us to imagine and create the non-existent, which I’m driven to follow even today. I feel honored to be given this platform through which I can continue to share my love for cooking and hopefully inspire the generations to come.
While a variety of events continue to come and go, my focus remains on the ultimate goal which is to open a restaurant. I never dreamt of being a chef or even a MasterChef. But being a successful restaurateur is what I have always dreamt of, still do and will do until it comes alive.