If chef Vishwesh Bhatt invited you over for a dinner party and you entered expecting a spread of masalas and chaats custom in his homeland of Western India, you’d be served surprise. Having moved to Oxford, Mississippi, for graduate school several years after relocating from India to Texas at age 18, Bhatt spent his formative cooking years in the Deep South among garden bounties and briskets from the pits of the Lone Star State—meaning he’s more likely to serve you a flat iron steak from Texas’ 44 Farms and watermelon gazpacho instead. His debut cookbook, I Am From Here (W. W. Norton & Company, 2022), captures just that.
Placing emphasis on seasonality and the versatility of individual ingredients, Bhatt hones the spices of his heritage through seemingly familiar dishes while contributing to the expansion of the lexicon of Southern cooking. “Food travels,” Bhatt says. “Food doesn’t know nationalities or boundaries. Lots of people have contributed to Southern cuisine to make it what it is, and people will continue to contribute to it. It’s not a monolith that stays one way.”
