Last year, when Ajay Bhatt was a freshman at the Illinois Institute of Technology, he looked forward to meals as a chance to relax and socialize with his friends from the dorm. The one thing he didn’t do too much of was eat.
“All of Ajay’s friends became like my children,” says Darshna, who’s a senior chemist at Unilever. “When they go home, they are their parents’ children, but when they are in Chicago, they are mine.”
This year, Darshna wanted to continue cooking for her son and his friends, but she wasn’t looking forward to another year of commuting. While helping Ajay move into his dorm room, Darshna and her husband, Anil, discussed the food dilemma with the parents of Ajay’s new roommate, Sarjan Patel, who was from San Diego and was also Indian-American and a vegetarian.
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“Last year students were saying there were more vegetarian foods but they didn’t like the taste of it,” says Darshna. “That’s when we realized that our taste buds are developed with Indian spices. That touch was missing. But we also knew that no one can use Indian spices unless you have some Indian cooks there.”
That’s slowly beginning to change, and that day Ajay and Sarjan’s parents proposed a solution: Darshna could teach Pitner’s staff to cook Indian food.
In addition, he notes, rice or vegetables are cheaper than meat. The only potential obstacle was insurance liability for Darshna, who would be in the kitchen but not on the payroll. When Sodehxo gave Pitner the go-ahead, citing a clause that covered guest cooks, he called Darshna and gave her the good news.
“I’m black, so we think of vegetarian food differently,” he said. “If someone gave you vegetarian food, you’d say, ‘I need meat, something with flavor.’” But he was eager to learn. He had some of the vegetables cut and ready to go the first day Darshna joined him in the kitchen.
