Chef Ravinder Bhogal interviews composer Nitin Sawhney about the joy of creativity
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Food writer and restaurateur Ravinder Bhogal interviewed her friend Nitin Sawhney, the composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist, at her restaurant Jikoni. Here’s what happened.
Nitin Sawhney: Hi Ravinder, how’s it going, are you in a good place?
Ravinder Bhogal: Yeah, I’m good! I’m having a year for me, after two pretty hectic years of book promotion. I’m taking a year to really find joy.
NS: Well that’s what your book, Comfort & Joy, is about! How’s that going?
RB: Comfort & Joy has done really well. I went to the States and did all the festivals in the UK so it was hectic but really joyful. The last book came out during the pandemic so there were no live events.
NS: You’ve had such a successful career as a writer as well as an amazing chef. That’s what I’m full of admiration for, you’ve had these parallel careers and they compliment each other. Do you have a love for one over the other or do you feel they cross-fertilise?
Cooking is a very maternal thing. I didn’t go to cookery school, I was taught to cook by women who were taught to cook to nurture and nourish
Ravinder Bhogal
RB: We’re quite similar in a way: you’re also multi hyphenate, you’re a polymath, you do so much, but I think the similarity in the writing and cooking is it’s about giving a service to someone. It’s about how you make someone feel when they read a piece you’ve written or eat a meal you’ve cooked. I think similarly you’re like that with music, ultimately you know it’s going to move someone in a certain way and I think there’s a joy in that, isn’t there?
NS: Yes, absolutely. I was talking to somebody about the neurology of music. The nucleus accumbens, the part of the brain which is the reward centre: it’s interesting in how that works with music and also the way it works with food. Your brain rewards you as well as your palette.
RB: It’s about the intention you put in when you’re creating a piece of music or cooking a dish. It’s a very maternal thing. I didn’t go to cookery school, I was taught to cook by women who were taught to cook to nurture and nourish their families. It’s an innate, deeply entrenched feeling. I always want to look after people, nurture people. With you recently when you were sick my instinct was to bring some food around.
NS: That was so kind of you!
RB: I run a restaurant and while it has to be commercial I really do it for the love. For the feeling it gives other people.
NS: That’s what I love about your food: it’s a synesthetic experience. It’s about memory, it’s about different senses being evoked. Were you ever conscious of that?
RB: I just think food is life and life is complicated. There are so many emotions when it comes to food. Recipes are like stories with no endings – particularly the kind of food I cook, which is immigrant food. It’s constantly evolving. It’s an amazing way of telling stories about people and celebrating the similarities we have but also the differences.
The food that I cook is often a bit political. We have something like the prawn toast scotch egg, which I’ve always described as this bonny love child of a British scotch egg and a Chinese prawn toast. What we’re trying to say is that when you bring cultures together, you create something that’s better than the sum of their parts. This is also a form of soft-activism and it’s wonderful to see people use it, whether it’s through music or food or poetry, it’s a really powerful way of being active in the world.
NS: It’s interesting that you talk about stories. You studied literature and you’re a great writer but you have this awareness of narrative in the way the foods work together. You have to have that as a writer but also as a chef, which is fascinating.
When you bring cultures together, you create something that’s better than the sum of their parts. This is a form of soft-activism
Ravinder Bhogal
RB: It’s a gentle sort of storytelling. We are taking people on a journey when they come into the restaurant. I remember the first track we ever played on our first service was The Boatman from your album! I felt like I was about to go on this massive journey. It felt like crossing over, and that song is so beautiful. It feels like a lullaby. It was very calming to listen to as my first plate went out. I felt like I was crossing a river myself.
NS: I love that. The western concept of the ferryman represents somebody who takes you to a peaceful future, to destiny. I think there’s something poetic about that image, it’s something I find really inspiring, musically.
RB: I’ve grown up as a sikh and that representation of crossing over a river for us often means going from life to death. But I think in life you can have many little deaths and rebirths. You’re born a new person all the time, every time you go through something. For me that was disentangling myself from my past and having the courage to open a restaurant. You think about these themes of immigration and identity on your new album and that kind of diversity is what makes the world such an interesting place to be in.
NS: I’m a Booker Prize judge and it’s interesting for me how many books there are now focusing on the concept of cultural identity, looking at it from many perspectives. I keep thinking, is it because I’m especially aware of that subject? But it’s not: a lot of people are thinking about identity. It comes up in politics, it comes up in culture, it comes up in schools. Identity is constantly a battleground, as well as a place for people to feel safe. That’s what I wanted to do with the album: create a safe space for people to express themselves. I always feel your restaurant Jikoni is a safe space.
RB: I always wanted it to be. People kept asking ‘Why did you do Jikoni? Why do you do the kind of food that you do?’
It was a subconscious thing for me because, as an East African Indian, British born, raised in London, I have so many identities. But I was being pigeon-holed. ‘You’re a brown girl, you must do Indian food.’ Throughout school and growing up there was this box you were supposed to fit into. I really struggled with that. I felt that I’d always lived in a sort of hinterland between who I was to my parents and who I was outside the home and who I really am. Jikoni is the place where I can express my multiple identities, my multiple tongues.
We have dishes on the menu that have Swahili names, Indian names, we don’t try to reduce them by saying, ‘It’s a chicken curry.’ We will call it by what it is, the kuku paka.
The thing I feel most proud of is that we have such an international crowd. Once on a table of 10, there was a Palestinian, an Egyptian, a Lebanese person, someone from Paris and all these people were saying, ‘Wow, this tastes like something my grandmother used to make.’ If they’re finding a sense of home at Jikoni, I feel like I’ve had a good day in the office.
•To book a table at Ravinder’s restaurant Jikoni go to jikonilondon.com; Comfort & Joy cookbook is available now; For more on Nitin Sawhney visit nitinsawhney.com