Salt + Spine
Salt & Spine
How Preeti Mistry merges identity, activism, and Indian street food
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How Preeti Mistry merges identity, activism, and Indian street food

“I wanted there to be a certain amount of interactiveness, and playfulness, and irreverence and not just sort of this pretty pictures and recipes.”

This week, we're excited to welcome chef Preeti Mistry to SALT + SPINE, the podcast on stories behind cookbooks.

Preeti is the author of The Juhu Beach Club Cookbook: Indian Spice, Oakland Soul, and the force behind the for-now-shuttered Juhu Beach Club restaurant.

A graduate of Le Cordon Bleu, Preeti worked in fine dining, and then as executive chef at the de Young Museum and Google before opening Juhu Beach Club. A short stint on the sixth season of Top Chef marked Preeti's national debut.

Preeti's first cookbook, The Juhu Beach Club Cookbook, highlights some of the best and most well-known dishes from the restaurant—from the famous Manchurian Cauliflower to the Pulled Pork Vindaloo Pav to the JBC Doswaffle, a hybrid between a South Indian dosa and a Belgian-style waffle.

We sat down with Preeti at San Francisco's The Civic Kitchen cooking school to talk about this cookbook-memoir, their influences, and Preeti’s philosophy behind running a restaurant.