look

listen

smell

touch

taste

process the process.

As a fourth-generation South-Asian expat raised in Dubai, in a family of food merchants and enthusiastic cooks, the indoor supermarket became the central place for food provision in Bhavika’s home. The supermarket was a haven of possibilities and a site of convergence. As Dubai transitioned from a desert region to a cosmopolitan city, contrasts erupted between a need to preserve ancestral cuisine from a motherland, agricultural limitations in the form of no fresh produce, yet flourishing international trade routes. 

This shift paved way for a changing approach to cooking. Recipes needed to substitute ingredients with more accessible ones, oftentimes borrowing from other cultures, or finding more economical solutions. This cuisine-agnostic pantry now became the new constant, fuelling Bhatia’s approach to creating anything in the kitchen absorbed by the adage of “Make best of what you have”,  less from a mindset of scarcity, more from a mindset of abundance and beady-eyed curiosity. Having developed a cooking style that melds structure and play, sitting on the fence between comfort and surprise, she is rooted in the belief that the ingredients of complexity are merely myriad layers of simplicity.

With a little bit of kitchen magic, she celebrates her paths crossing with her audience by using a piece of toast as a canvas to commemorate the brevity of the unknown, creating flavour experiences unique to her in