With two decades of professional culinary experience, chef Surbhi Sahni brings home cooking traditions to modern South Asian cuisine and confections. As a proud queer Indian female chef and entrepreneur, Surbhi pushes back against the manufactured prestige of Eurocentric white male chefs, and uses her platform to restore dignity to the legacies of home cooks, vegetable growers, rice farmers and spice wallahs who have cultivated regional cuisines for centuries.
Before launching TAGMO, a South Asian food company, in 2019, Surbhi served as the creative force behind Michelin-starred New York City restaurants, Devi and Tulsi, and Saar Bistro in Midtown. She also served as the creative director and events director at Hemant Mathur Catering.
TAGMO, the Bhutanese word for tigress, is a small batch South Asian food company run by women of color. The company makes regional home foods and specialty sweets from across India that tell stories of migration, cultural exchange and resilience in the diaspora. She put together this video especially for SEEMA on the occasion of Holi, with instructions on how to decorate colorful holi sweets.
