BENGALURU: Every day is a learning experience for Vasundhara Jhunjhunwala, who has taken it upon herself to run Old Fashioned Gourmet, which was started by her mother, Shyamlata Sihare, in 1993. “It was my mother’s last wish that I continue her set-up. But when she told me, I said can’t do it, and she accepted the answer,” says Jhunjhunwala, adding that her mother had a big list of buyers, including the family of politician LK Advani.
But somewhere in the heart of hearts, she knew her calling. While things continued just the way they used to be in the initial years after her mother’s passing, with staff in Delhi helping out, in the last one year, Jhunjhunwala has been working on creating a social media presence. “I just completed a course in online marketing to understand how I should be going about this. With this set-up only including four people who are involved end-to-end, I decided to design the website on my own. I have taken it as a challenge and have also been giving online food demos during the lockdown,” says Jhunjhunwala, who moved to Bengaluru from Delhi in 1997.
The heirloom recipes – spices, papads and jams – are prepared at her home in Delhi, with Jhunjhunwala travelling there every couple of weeks. During the pandemic, she has been remotely managing the setup.
Guests at home were often in awe of the Marwari meal served in a silver thali, and asked her the secret behind the flavours, to which she would always say, “The key to any food is the ingredients”. Which is why Jhunjhunwala is particular that the ingredients are sourced from the place of origin, without focussing on cost. The products are priced between Rs 80 andRs 450.
The Ancient Mint Salt, which Jhunjhunwala found in old handwritten recipe books, blends 25 spices and mineral salts. These include pink Himalayan salt, black salt, Southern salt, and sambar salt to name a few. It also has 19 spices, including long pepper, in small portions. These are added for biryani, parantha, or buttermilk. “When I started off, I didn’t know what many of these ingredients were. I remember going to Delhi’s oldest spice market, Khari Baoli, to find out what sambar salt was, which I assumed was made in the South.
Much to my surprise, an elderly gentlemen said this originated in Rajasthan,” says Jhunjhunwala, narrating that her mother became a child widow at the age of 16, and was mistreated by her in-laws. Her grandfather would have none of it and brought her back to her maternal home. She was then home-schooled all the way to her post graduation, and persuaded her family to send her to the US for further studies.
In 1964, she went to Michigan State University to pursue MA in advertising, after which she came back to join her family business before setting up her own in 1970, and became the first woman paper merchant in Delhi’s all-male paper market. “In spite of having a thriving paper trading business she chose to venture into the food at the age of 65, because it was her passion,” says Jhunjhunwala.
Unlike commercially available papads which are made using soda-bi-carbonate, their range – which includes aloo papad, moong papad, and Bijora, which is sesame papad – are made using an ancient ingredient called ‘Sajji-Khar’, which lends the papads a flavour and also makes it pliable and gut-friendly. “The staff has been with our family for years and they do the preparations out of muscle memory. But there’s one standard all of us go by, ‘Would Amma approve of this?’,” she says, adding, “The biggest reward is when I hear, ‘I’ve never tasted anything like this’.”