If you happen to walk into The Secret Kitchen in Ahmedabad — a restaurant run by Aanal Kotak — you may find yourself awestruck at the kind of dishes that are made here. Not only are these the result of a unique blend of ingredients, but they also have a deeper, cultural meaning. 

For instance, one of the most popular dishes on the menu, she tells The Better India, is the ‘Caged Samosa’, which borrows inspiration from a recipe followed by a 100-year-old shop in the town of Kutch, and one that she came across during her research for the restaurant. 

“I loved the recipe so much that I brought it to my restaurant. Here, I wanted the serving to represent how the samosa had found a new lease on life and from a small town had now found its way to so many others. So I began serving it in a cage, hence the name.”  

In fact, Aanal notes that at the Sydney outlet of The Secret Kitchen in Australia, the Caged Samosa is the “fastest-moving starter”. 

Having built such a loved and celebrated food brand, Aanal says she finds the journey to be quite “surreal”. Her dreams of becoming a chef had taken shape since the young age of six. 

“I would play with the kitchen toy set, and as I grew older, I’d sit near my mom in the kitchen as she cooked. I loved watching her create new recipes and unique flavours,” she says, adding that when it was time to choose a career, she was clear that a chef was what she wanted to be. 

“But, I wasn’t allowed. I was raised in a Gujarati family, which did not believe in girls becoming ‘chefs’. I was told I........

© The Better India