Today, Vikas Khanna is known for several things: his Michelin-star restaurants, bestselling books, and being a judge on the popular TV show MasterChef India. Yet, the celebrated chef has also been through hardship and shown great perseverance; it’s not often that people discuss his past.
Early Struggles
Khanna was born in 1971 in Amritsar, India. His childhood was challenging. He was born with clubfoot, which caused both of his legs to be physically ‘misaligned’. Doctors told Khanna’s family that there was a chance he would never be able to walk correctly. As a child, Khanna wore heavy wooden corrective shoes, which were difficult to move around due to their weight, and attracted lots of undesirable attention from other kids due to their size. While being teased and bullied throughout his childhood, he found comfort in the kitchen while watching his grandmother cook.
Discovering a love for cooking
Cooking became much more than a hobby for Vikas; it grew into a way of life. The dishes his grandmother made using traditional recipes, along with the many restaurants and vendors in Amritsar, provided him with opportunities to experiment with and learn about all the different types of food. Khanna saw that food unifies people, and as such, it quietly helped him shape his dream to become a chef, even though he was unaware of how he would one day accomplish that goal.
Education and language barriers
Another challenge followed him as he grew older: language. In his pursuit of Hospitality Education, English was not really his language. Reports say that the principal of the Manipal Academy of Higher Education had to be persuaded by Khanna to allow him into the school based on his limited English-language skills. Every step in each direction, the Chef needed extra courage.
What many do not know is that when he moved to the United States to pursue a culinary career, things were not all that glamorous. Like many immigrants in pursuit of their dream, Khanna struggled financially and also faced cultural barriers. There were times when he felt invisible in a very competitive industry (food). He has mentioned that when he was starting out in the food industry, Indian Cuisine was considered to be lesser than in comparison to that of Fine Dining presented by other cultures and cuisines.
Putting Indian cuisine on the global map
However, Vikas Khanna never lost his desire to fulfil his dreams of promoting Indian cuisine. He made a commitment to himself to promote it on a global stage. That persistence paid off when his New York restaurant Junoon earned a Michelin star, a rare achievement for an Indian chef at the time.
Building a legacy beyond food
Khanna has created more than just restaurants and television appearances; he has created a legacy. He has become a cultural ambassador of Indian cuisine, an author, a humanitarian, and a filmmaker. The ways he has given back to society through his initiatives during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially his large-scale distribution of food, speak to his commitment to helping others.
Today, Khanna is considered one of the most recognized faces associated with Indian cuisine. However, it is not the awards or television programs that make this story so powerful. It is the story of a child who could not walk and now runs every day to remind himself of all he has accomplished.
