Spreading magic of Indian food Aroma in New Zealand

Chef Makarnd Karkhanis is one of most imminent, well – known and highest paid Indian Chefs in New Zealand.  His story of entering his into his profession involves immense twist and turns. His profession started as a Qualified Botanist. One day he decided to relocate to New Zealand in search of the new business opportunities while hunting business opportunity he often uses to crave for Indian food.

Chef Makarnd Karkhanis claims to be a big foodie that he was one of the most similar faces in the entire famous restaurant in Pune. Pune is one of the magical cities in India with uncountable and most wonderful food joints.

In the alien land, he would often satisfy himself by imagining the taste of panipuri and Shrikand but one day his curving reached to a level that he went in search of delicious Panipuri. Fortunately, he found the place that served Panipuri but unfortunately, it was tasteless and way too expensive. With immense dissatisfaction, he decided that he would prepare panipuri on his own. He imagined the tasted, called his sister, and prepared panipuri on his own. He was so delighted with the taste that he decided to call a couple of his friends as well. He started enjoying imagining Indian dishes and preparing it. Chef used to often call his friends to taste the dishes and each one of them always appreciated it.

One day he got an opportunity to commercialize his cooking. Marathi Mandal (organization of Marathi people in New Zealand) asked him to cater Shrikand in one of their meetings. Without giving a second thought he grabbed the opportunity and catered them with Shrikand. He had sleepless nights wondering about the feedback he would get from the people. People loved the taste so much that he got immense calls appreciating the Shrikand he prepared. Delighted and overwhelmed with the response he decided to start his own food truck and name it as “Soul Curry”. Soul Curry was the first food truck in New Zealand that catered Indian street food.  Within few months Soul Curry was at the peak of its success and was well known amongst Indians and Non- Indians.

Like an opportunist, Chef decided not to leave any stone unturned and started taking all the catering orders that he could get. Finally, he decided to expand his food business and came up with his restaurant “Curry Mantra” which was named amongst the top 3 Indian restaurants in the prestigious Indian Business Award.

Chef Makarnd Karkhanis firmly believes that one can be a successful chef if one can imagine the taste of food ingredients, apply logic, be creative and have the ability to memorize the taste to the food ingredient. By applying this formula a chef can come up with immense mouth watering and delicious receipts. The success of Soul Curry and Curry Mantra proved his formula to be apt.

He did not stop after the immense success of these two food ventures. He observed that there was a huge demand for ice cream. So he decided to try his hand on frozen desserts. He came up with Paan ice cream like always imagined all the masala used to prepare paan and come up with “paan ice cream”. After he got a lot of appreciation for the first ice cream he started preparing more Indian flavoured ice cream. His ice cream was so delicious and magnificent that Mayor of Auckland, Mr Phil Goff decided to launch Subi’s Ice Creams/Frozen Desserts in New Zealand market.

While he was climbing up each step of success Chef Makarnd Karkhanis was being observed by the owner of Urban Turban, one of the biggest and most elite Indian restaurant in New Zealand. Finally, he offered Chef Makarnd Karkhanis position of head chef in his Urban Turban. When chef started working as a head chef he realized that display/ food styling is essential to increase the worth and taste of a dish. So he started his research on Modernist food and has become of one the expert in that line as well. Recently, he has joined D’ Grand Havali as a head chef and holds food line on the menu card at his name where all the dished is based on Modernist food concept.

Though he holds an expertise in Marathi cuisine but firmly believes that each cuisine or each dish has it own story like every human. The story comes from the area the food ingredients originates and based on which culture the dish is prepared. Availability and quality of the food ingredients make huge difference in the taste of any dish.

He believes that to be a successful chef it is very important to focus on the satisfaction of their customers. He follows a simple success mantra

“ Love your food

Love your customers

Automatically best will come up.”

HospiBuz wishes Chef Makarnd Karkhanis immense good luck for his future success and profession growth.

Comments

0