When Ahmedaki Laloo was training to be a chef at Manipal University, she missed the taste of her home state, Meghalaya. “I would tell my mom to send some pickles, fermented bamboo shoots, fish chutney, and condiments,” recalls the Shillong-born chef, who was recently in Chennai, as a part of Zhouyu Hosts, a culinary pop-up series that brings chefs from across India and Asia to the city.But, like other people from the Northeast, she often worried about what her peers would think of this food: “of people mocking us and saying that my food is stinky,” says Ahmedaki.
A meal at Rynsan in Shillong
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Special Arrangement
And yet, something changed when she saw how proud her classmates and friends from other parts of the country were about their food. “They would flaunt it. And then, I realised that if I could have ghee and curry leaves, why couldn’t you eat our food?,” says Ahmedaki.The realisation had a profound impact on her. After she graduated and worked in several restaurants across the country and returned home in the winter of 2020 to establish A’Origins, a culinary enterprise that seeks to bring this region’s cuisine to the rest of the world. “I wanted to express myself and tell stories through food,” she says.
