From Guwahati Kitchens to Rashtrapati Bhavan, This Family’s Legacy With Food Goes Back to 1998

At chef Aabhishek Bedi Varma’s restaurant in Guwahati, every platter boasts a perfect choreography, as potatoes suit up in their jackets, millets crackle softly in applause, while moringa powder and kaji nemu (Assam lemon) dust tie the rhythm together. And at the helm of this culinary concert is Aabhishek, who speaks the language of ingredients; they bend to his will.

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For Aabhishek (38), creating a dish is a dialogue, one that begins when he hand-picks an ingredient during his travels, and ends only when it finds belonging in a dish. But as the chef shares, the knack for coaxing flavours out of unassuming ingredients is a family trait — one he’s inherited from his mother, Surekha Bedi.

The family started exploring their culinary voice in the late 90s with Khalsa Parivaar, a restaurant hinged on family dining and introducing Punjabi tadkasto Guwahati.

Through the years, their menus saw a shift — Lush and Levitate in Guwahati are more geared towards Northeastern and eclectic curations — but their ethos hasn’t. Every dish continues to be a toast to the culture of the state they call home — Assam.

And on Republic Day this year, their alchemy made its way to the Rashtrapati Bhavan, in the form of dishes that were part of the High Tea and At Home Reception, hosted by the President of India, with 1,200 members in attendance, including the Prime Minister and Cabinet ministers.

An inherited understanding of food

Surekha Bedi is a staunch vegetarian. But the people of Guwahati, who used to frequent Khalsa Parivaar as kids with their parents, attribute the best smoked chicken (chicken slow-cooked on a charcoal grill) to her.

Surekha (given that she is a vegetarian) would never sample the dish (or any meat-based dish for that matter) to check if the flavours were balanced or if the salt was right. But the smoked chicken would betray no evidence of having gone unsampled.

But if you didn’t taste, then how did you know everything was right?

“I just did,” she replies.

And this knowing has lingered through the years, even now, through the meals she prepares for her children (who describe themselves as ‘eaterians’ — “We eat everything.”).

Sidharth Bedi Varma (34), who grew up watching his mother’s culinary flair, talks about how the Bedi home kitchen often resembled a lab, where instinct substitutes measurement, memory stands in for method, recipes are tested by intuition, and flavour is the final proof. It’s this experimenting that holds the kitchen — and the restaurants run by the family — together. 

Sharing about her foray into cooking, Surekha recalls the challenge of venturing into the Northeast culinary space (predominantly a meat-based space) as a vegetarian in the late 90s. But she was quick to pick up nuances; she credits her mother-in-law for this. Surekha’s children watched intently and learned.

She jokes about how a toddler Aabhishek, instead of playing with toys, would find solace in the kitchen utensils. 

Now, as a professional chef, Aabhishek still enjoys the same games. And his guests, the outcomes of it — lotus stem chips, cream cheese, and kaji nemu infused dimsums, ricotta(light, creamy, Italian whey cheese) wrapped in pumpkin leaves, black rice tacos with pulled jackfruit and coriander oil.

The experiments never end.

“When I started my journey in the cooking space, I just dreamt of someday having my own little laboratory where I could invent stuff. Even now, I keep thinking of how we can change the menu with the seasons. Admittedly, doing that in Guwahati is a challenge because people are accustomed to certain tastes, but we still try,” he says.

Where food is a nostalgic hat tip to the homeland

Elaborating on a few of the dishes that made the cut to the menu, he explains, “We had to cover the eight states [of Northeast India]. There was singju(a Manipuri salad made with fresh greens, herbs, fermented fish which was left out of the vegetarian version created for the menu, king chilli and perilla seeds); paknam(a traditional pancake made with chickpea flour, green vegetables and a mixture of herbs and spices, steamed in turmeric leaves to retain flavour); tekeli pitha(rice flour dumplings with jaggery and coconut filling); thukpa (a quintessential Northeastern soup with vegetables and herbs); Matabari pedha(a GI-tagged sweet native to Tripura); and thekera tenga sorbot (an Assamese summer cooler made from a sour fruit thekeraindigenous to the Northeast).

The essence of the Northeast reverberated through the dishes. And this is what thrilled Aabhishek.

“I’ve always been obsessed with working with local foods. Having the people of my hometown understand the beauty and diversity of our food is important,” he shares, adding that he has endeavoured to reason how the playing field is vast, beyond wheat and rice, which for decades have been the beating heart of Northeastern cuisine.

Intrepidity runs in the family DNA, whether now or even three decades ago when the family started Khalsa Parivaar. As Surekha shares, “When we started, we were discouraged since people told us Guwahati wasn’t a place where such a concept could grow.”

For Surekha, who had grown up in Delhi and enjoyed the thrill of visiting dhabas(rustic eateries) and family eateries, she saw the risk paying off. “I was confident about it, and in fact, now if you come to Guwahati, you’ll see how so many similar eateries have come up.”

But, she reasons, food is only as good as the ingredients that make it up.

Taking unconventional spins on traditional dishes

Aabhishek loves bike rides. One reason is the open road, but more importantly, he sees these trips as grocery expeditions. Only, instead of looking through shelves stacked with produce, he keeps an eye out for wild berries and native vegetables. These later find their way into his food.

Sharing about one of his dishes patishapta pitha, chef Aabhishek talks about how he tweaked the recipe of the traditional crepe, which is routinely made with rice flour and maida(refined flour).

“While on my way to Shillong, I came across some black berries called sohiong. They had a sweet-sour taste. I figured they could be turned into a jam. Once back home, I cooked the berries with jaggery into a compote, which I spread over the patishapta pitha.”But, instead of flour, Aabhishek used koni dhan (foxtail millet).

“This made it tougher to get the binding right. But that’s the fun of experimenting,” he laughs.

Even the filling of coconut and jaggery underwent a substitution. “We instead filled the crepe with a kheer(sweet pudding) made of black rice and almond milk.” Other ingredients he has come across on his travels include native fruits (varieties of oranges that peel like grapefruits), unpolished millets, and black garlic that often makes a cameo in the homemade butter.

Pushing the envelope on flavours thrills mother and sons. Of course, there is always the risk of an experiment not working out, but as Aabhishek puts it, “There’s only one way to find out. You go ahead and try.”

All pictures courtesy Aabhishek Bedi Varma