A Chat with Celebrity Chef Hanisha Singh

It’s time to share another interesting interview here on my blog. For a Women’s Day piece on the rise of women chefs helming restaurants and other culinary enterprises, which was published in OPEN magazine, I interviewed celebrity chef Hanisha Singh, who is the Chef-Owner and Co-Founder of popular Delhi-based eateries Plats, Chard, Genre and Savage/Painkiller. Her answers were candid and very insightful. Read on to know more!

Noor Anand Chawla (NAC): Please tell us about your journey so far and the many roles you have donned in the culinary space.

Hanisha Singh (HS): It started in my grandmother’s kitchen — that’s where the need to cook and to feed people first took root. From there, I trained formally and built my early career in hotel kitchens, starting with the Oberoi hotels, where I learned the discipline and rigour that professional cooking demands. I later headed the kitchen at Smoke House Grill.

In 2012, I started My Little Food Company, or MLFC, which was the first real venture of my own. It began with cooking classes and intimate caterings and quickly expanded into full-scale restaurant and menu consulting. I also worked as a Chef Consultant for KitchenAid across the Asia Pacific region during this time.

Conceptualising menus, training teams, and opening over 20 restaurants across the country taught me as much about running a business as it did about cooking

In 2019, Jamsheed (Bhote – her business partner and husband) and I opened Plats in Shivalik — our first fully owned, chef-run restaurant. Since then, we’ve grown into a restaurant group with Chard, our burgers and grills concept in Vasant Vihar; partners at Genre in Defence Colony; and Savage/Painkiller in Hauz Khas, a dual concept that transitions from a daytime sandwich spot to an evening bar. I’ve been a chef, consultant, cooking instructor, business owner, and creative director all at once — and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

NAC: What is the advantage of being a woman in the culinary arts?

HS: I think women tend to bring a particular kind of emotional intelligence to the kitchen and dining experience. We think about food as something that nurtures — not just the body but the mood, the memory, the moment. That sensitivity informs how we develop menus, how we treat our teams, and how we interact with guests.

Women are also often naturally inclined to think across disciplines. When I’m creating a new restaurant concept, I’m simultaneously thinking about the food, the story behind it, building that brand identity, the space, the service, and the guest experience as a whole. That holistic thinking is something I consider an advantage, and I think it comes quite naturally to many women in this field.

NAC: What does the industry need to do to reshape the narrative around haute cuisine as it currently stands?

HS: The conversation around what makes food ‘fine’ or ‘haute’ needs to expand. For too long, the dominant reference points have been European — French technique, classical plating, certain ingredient hierarchies.

We’re living through a genuinely exciting moment in food. The formality and rigidity that once defined haute cuisine is softening, and I think that’s a good thing. Guests today don’t want to feel like they’re being tested — they want to feel invited. And Indian cuisine finding its rightful place on the global stage is one of the most satisfying parts of this shift. This is food with extraordinary depth, history, and technique — it just took the world a little while to look up and see it.

What’s also changing is how chefs and restaurants are choosing to define themselves. There’s a growing movement of cuisine-agnostic restaurants — and I include Plats in this — where the menu isn’t bound by geography or tradition. We take inspiration from everywhere, cook whatever excites us, and let flavour lead. It’s robust, it’s honest, and it has no interest in fitting into a box. That freedom is producing some of the most interesting food being made right now, anywhere in the world.

What I’d love to see next is the industry stop treating diversity as a trend and start treating it as the baseline. The chefs doing the most interesting work right now come from all kinds of backgrounds, geographies, and perspectives — including many women. That’s not a moment, that’s the direction. 

NAC: What do you think of the perception that professional kitchens remain male-dominated spaces? Has that ever been a deterrent?

HS: I’d be dishonest if I said there was never friction. Professional kitchens have historically had a very particular culture — one that was often built around hierarchy, physical endurance, and a certain kind of machismo. There were moments early in my career where I had to work harder to earn the same credibility, or where my authority was questioned in ways that my male colleagues simply didn’t experience.

But I never let it be a deterrent, because I refused to internalise it as a reflection of my capability. If anything, it made me more determined to build spaces — both in my own kitchens and in the broader culture of my restaurants — where that kind of dynamic simply doesn’t have room to take hold. At Plats, at Chard, across our group, we deliberately cultivate a culture of respect and merit. The best idea wins, regardless of who it comes from.

NAC: What has the journey been like for you, and for the culinary space in general, in terms of women in creative and leadership roles?

HS: When I started out, women were largely invisible in the narrative around professional cooking in India — present in the kitchen at home. The women who did break through often did so quietly, without the fanfare and the reach that social media has brought in the last 10-12 years

What’s changed is that there’s now a growing recognition that women have always been there, doing the work. The difference is that we’re being seen and heard more. There are women today owning and running critically acclaimed restaurants, leading teams, representing India on international platforms. That visibility matters because it makes the path easier for the next generation.

My own journey has been one of building incrementally — from consulting to owning, from one restaurant to a group. I’ve had to figure out most of it on the fly, while also being a mother and a partner in both life and business. It does really help having the best partner in life and work. It hasn’t always been graceful, but it’s been deeply rewarding.

NAC: How does being a woman impact how you conceive your business?

HS: In more ways than I sometimes consciously realise. I think about the people who come to our restaurants to work and dine — I want them to feel genuinely taken care of. That instinct shapes everything from how we train our service staff to how we write a menu. Food, for me, has always been about making people feel something: warm, excited, comforted, surprised.

Being a woman and a mother has also made me think seriously about the kind of workplace culture I want to create. I know what it’s like to navigate a demanding profession while managing personal responsibilities. That shapes how I think about our teams — their wellbeing, their growth, the kind of environment they come to every day. A business that doesn’t look after its people will never sustain the quality it aspires to.

And I think my identity as a woman informs the way I take creative risks. There’s an intuitive quality to how I develop food — it’s personal, it draws from memory and experience, it’s rooted in how I actually want to eat. I don’t feel the need to prove anything through complexity for its own sake. That confidence, I think, comes with time and with knowing your own voice — and it’s something I’m still growing into.

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All pictures courtesy Chef Hanisha Singh

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This blog post is part of ‘Blogaberry Dazzle’ hosted by Cindy D’Silva and Noor Anand Chawla.
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*This is not a sponsored post.

**Copyright in pictures and content belongs to nooranandchawla.com and cannot be republished or repurposed without express permission of the author. As I am a copyright lawyer by profession, infringement of any kind will invite strict legal action.

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