Meet Yamini

Whether she’s teaching you the proper way to handle spices or how to roll a perfectly circular roti, Yamini is committed to making everything from scratch using the freshest ingredients. 

She was born and raised in Mumbai, but her family was originally from Rajasthan. She grew up in a multi-family apartment building that she shared with around fifty family members. Yamini was interested in cooking from a young age and learned to cook from her mother, grandmothers, and aunts, taking on some of the family cooking responsibility starting at age ten.

Yamini’s father was a lawyer who was friends with people from many different cultural backgrounds, and he took her to eat in their homes, introducing her to many different cuisines. Her father was also a good cook, and she would watch him cook for large community religious festivals. At home, her family cooked mostly Rajasthani food, but she had a lot of neighbors and friends who were from other regions, and she learned to cook food from all of them. After Yamini married, she learned how to cook the cuisines of southern India, too. She soon became known as one of the best cooks in her entire extended family. 

Yamini moved to New York City with her husband and three daughters in 1999. After years of bringing lunch to share with her coworkers at a jewelry company in Manhattan, she started a small catering business in 2009. She now has four grandchildren and lives in Queens.

Yamini and her cooking have been featured by Saveur, Food & Wine, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Travel + Leisure, Oprah Magazine, MSNBC “Your Business”, WNYC, CBS New York, and more.