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Julie Sahni’s Indian Cooking School first started in 1973 and has become one of the leading Indian cooking school’s in America. Today, her award-winning cooking classes are booked up months in advance with students flying in from all over the world. CitySaheli sat down with Sahni to talk about her business and to ask what advice she would give future entrepreneurs.
When first tasting Julie Sahni’s food, you might think that cooking had been her lifetime profession. But, while her business has been around since the early 70s, Sahni actually started out as an architect after graduating from Columbia University. So how did she suddenly decide to start a cooking business? “Basically, I was always interested in food and cooking, but I had no intention of making it my profession. I was an architect and a city planner and because of my interest in food, I was taking cooking classes. During one of those classes, some people asked me about Indian food and how Indian utensils were used, especially the Wok. So I decided to give them a class. From then on the word spread and I was literally booked for two years solid, while in the daytime I was writing legislation and designing as a city planner. I didn’t realize then that cooking was my passion.”
Sahni began teaching in the evenings, while keeping her day job as a city planner. But the enthusiasm for cooking soon outweighed her architectural ambitions. “At one point I just decided that I wanted to go into food full-time because, like many in my generation, I was watching Julia Child, who would say, ‘drop everything and go into the kitchen and cook!’ So I thought ‘okay,’ and I quit my job as a city planner and urban designer to teach cooking,” she explains. And if, in the beginning, it was somewhat tough, the hard work wasn’t going to stop the new cooking phenomena. “Like with writing, you go into it because of passion, and it builds, you learn how to live with new means. At least I didn’t have to worry about food; it was always there!”
The teaching eventually gave birth to her first cookbook, Classic Indian Cooking. And while she hadn’t yet thought of a publisher, an article featuring her work and recipes got the attention of several publishing houses. “Three publishers came knocking so I quickly negotiated a good contract for my book,” recalls Sahni. “It was not about money, I wanted to make a readable book. They sent me on a publicity tour to 20 cities, which was amazing. Most people had never heard of Indian cooking before. My colleagues who were teaching Italian, Mexican and French cooking on the Upper East Side told me: ‘Julie, if you can get one person excited, one person who will listen to you about cumin, consider it mission accomplished! Take it one step at a time. You need to build a foundation.’ I always followed that advice; it was the best I ever got.”
The book allowed her to have a regular income, but it also generated more cooking classes, which is how she met the person who would hire her to work at Nirvana Penthouse and Nirvana OneClub on the Upper West Side. “Each thing exposed me to the next,” she says. “I wasn’t looking for success. What I really was looking for was that feeling of euphoria that you get when you do something you like. I never knew the kind of satisfaction I would get from cooking. But luckily I found it early, and just by accident. If you find your own passion, whatever it is, don’t try to make it a success and don’t do it for money. Find something that you can put all your energy into, there should be no compromise. Everything else will follow.”
So where does she picture her business in the future? “I have plans, things are in the making,” says Sahni. But after having spent the last 40 years in the cooking business, teaching is still what matters the most. “Teaching is something that I will always do, I love to teach and there are also people who need to learn. Cooking is something that I can never be far from.”
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