Sameera Wadood on translating her engineering skills towards the culinary arts
Chef & Food Consultant
SW Consultancy
Photograph: Najmul Haque Sagor
From cyber-security engineer to chef and food consultant, you have had an interesting career trajectory. How did you find your calling?
I am an engineer at heart. I wanted to be one ever since I watched Rube Goldberg machines on Tom & Jerry as a child. While studying Computer Science and Engineering in college, I worked at a Security Think Tank and went on to become a Cyber Security Risk Assessment Consultant in Dhaka. As a single person living by myself, paying my way through college, I needed to be smart about how I cooked. I learned to cook at the age of 6 when I had to look after my baby sister. But following international recipes made no sense to me, neither did the exorbitant prices for imported ingredients. In an attempt to be frugal, my analytical mind substituted these recipes with local ingredients. Once, I came across a vegetable vendor at the local open market, selling what looked like watercress. New ingredients always excite me, so I asked him what it was. He insisted on giving it away to me for free. He lamented about the decline of demand for the thankuni pata aka Pennywort Leaves, and it genuinely hurt to hear. I tried to use my coding knowledge to develop a flavour algorithm to better pair local ingredients to international ones based on similarity– hoping to provide an extension for people to better swap ingredients in recipes.
I was astounded by the diversity of our produce. I started sharing this on the internet, plating the ingredients differently so people could see the value in them that I see. Agencies and restaurants started reaching out to help with their plating and food styling. But what really struck me was the communication gap in the culinary industry. We either invested in international chefs, who didn’t know local ingredients and cooked with subpar foreign produce; or did not allow local chefs the space to cook with local ingredients, rarely investing in training them. Our chefs are grossly underpaid; most cannot even afford to buy food at the places they cook at. I felt this innate need to help fill this gap by extending my access to knowledge. I started training chefs with local ingredients, and helping these restaurants find their own identity. It ended up saving restaurants on their Cost of Goods; a win-win. It truly wasn’t about finding my calling, but more about having this sense of urgency. I needed to do this or we would lose our identity, our space as Bangladeshis in the global culinary future and history eventually. After years of working as an engineer by day and chef by night, I quit cybersecurity and started Sameera Wadood (SW) consultancy in 2019.
Photograph: Courtesy of Sameera Wadood
I take inspiration from different forms of art media. I want to bend the rules of what we think fine dining is ‘supposed’ to look like. I wanted to play around with Bangladeshi ingredients in a way that highlighted them.
What inspires the unique aesthetic of your presentations?
I take inspiration from different forms of art media. I want to bend the rules of what we think fine dining is ‘supposed’ to look like. I wanted to play around with Bangladeshi ingredients in a way that highlighted them. SW’s take on the classic Aam Dudh Bhaat, is such a dish that challenges the perception of our cuisine as peasant food compared to its more popular cousin Mango Sticky Rice. Our dish is a Chinigura rice milk Semifreddo with Gopalbhog, Himshagor and Amrupali mangoes. I wanted to reinvent the classic Aam Dudh Bhaat, a dish reserved for our most intimate loved ones. It’s not a dish we see in restaurants but we do see Mango Sticky Rice. My plating is about showcasing what modern Bangladeshi cuisine looks like, as well as incorporating memories and stories of everyday Bangladeshis, challenging the white-washed, exoticised narrative.
Photograph: Courtesy of Sameera Wadood
You have aligned your journey as a professional with the pursuit of decolonising fine dining from an exclusionary experience. Why is this important to you?
Decolonising fine dining is an extensive conversation that we need to have with the rest of the world. When I started my consultancy, nobody believed it would be feasible except the two people who helped me build my brand – my sister Sameeha Wadood and my friend Nuhash Humayun. I believe internalised colonialism in us makes us think that risotto should be more expensive than khichuri. All the food award lists are made by Western forward countries, and we have to adhere to systems built on Western food. I wanted to challenge this and show the world what we can do with Bangladeshi ingredients. I also think that we as Bangladeshis intrinsically believe that our food should always be cheap; we are afraid to ask for more. But what if the ingredients are of the highest quality, single origin and ethically sourced? We need to break the international mould of what fine-dining is, to allow Bangladeshi cuisine to have a fair shot. I believe it is absolutely our job to do that, and it is my life’s purpose.
What services does SW Consultancy offer?
The first part is the Culinary Lab, which revolves around reinventing the use of Bangladeshi ingredients. We research local ingredients and go to different parts of the country to find different varieties of rice, fish, etc. As part of the Culinary Lab, we build new ingredients from local ingredients, that we can use in our different ventures. We make miso from kathal, which we then ferment further to make our own tamari (gluten-free soy sauce). When jaam is in season, we ferment it to make balsamic vinegar and age it for a year. The Culinary Lab is about extending our ingredient database, our primary toolset, and then respectfully building recipes around them.
Secondly, we consult for local and international restaurants and hospitality groups. I am currently building the new Chef’s Table Food Space in Gulshan 1, creating seven new brands under United Group. This includes building unique menu(s), training the chefs to create and explore local ingredients and new techniques, and allowing them space to think critically so that they can modify the recipes as required seasonally. I help restaurants find their unique identity; I want someone to visit an establishment I have worked with and think ‘This is something I can only find at this particular restaurant, just in Bangladesh.’ I want people to travel to Bangladesh as a culinary destination.
Lastly, we host Private Dinners, both personally and on a corporate level. Here we get to push the limits of Bangladeshi ingredients we develop in the culinary lab. We serve a multicourse tasting menu, creating innovative dishes that have never existed before. It is about throwing the script out the window. It also helps our clients experience our future with them, and get a glimpse into our vision. SW Consultancy is a three-tiered approach to disrupting the culinary industry in Bangladesh and internationally.
What exciting things can we expect from you in the coming months?
Our private dinners are in full swing. Expect to see us do pop-ups all over the world, in Paris, Seoul, New York, etc., and use their local ingredients to cook Bangladeshi food and flip that dynamic. My aim is to see Bangladeshi food on different menus around the world and to4 make it more accessible. We are currently working with a New York based hospitality group to put Bangladeshi dishes on luxury menu(s). I don’t think caviar or foie gras is any more precious than ilish er dim; I think it’s about Western food narratives and how it is marketed. It is time for global audiences to realise that our ingredients are precious and deserve more attention. And definitely expect to see more thankuni pata everywhere.