The Juhu Beach Club Cookbook

Starred review from October 30, 2017
Mistry, co-owner of the Juhu Beach Club in Oakland, Calif., debuts with this stellar collection of Indian-inspired recipes, along with stories of growing up in an immigrant family. Her creativity and enthusiasm for Indian cooking is apparent in each recipe. Her street-style foods blend American and Indian ingredients: pulled pork vindaloo, shrimp “po’bhai,” and potato chips with chaat masala. A chapter devoted to comfort foods reflects her parents’ Gujarati and Indian-African backgrounds (her father grew up in Uganda), and includes Guju chili, channa with eggs and sausage, and coconut carrot ginger soup. Mistry devotes a chapter to spice blends, the lifeblood of her restaurant. Once hooked, home cooks would do well to spend some time filling their cupboard with her signature blends, which include a smoky black cardamom masala, mustard fenugreek masala, and chutney masala. Her energy and passion infuse the entire cookbook, which is as exciting and inspiring to read as it is to cook from.

December 1, 2017

Mistry, a Top Chef alumna and former executive chef at Google, co-owns Juhu Beach Club, a restaurant in Oakland that serves what she affectionately calls "the hot dogs and funnel cakes of Indian cuisine." With coauthor Henry (Farmsteads of the California Coast), she provides recipes for vibrant street cuisine, comfort foods, and signature dishes, including ginger chile dungeness crab, masala fries, Manchurian cauliflower, and coconut tamarind curry. Inventive slider sandwiches and fusion dishes (e.g., "doswaffles," a South Indian dosa and Belgian waffle hybrid) are particularly inspired, and they'll tempt adventurous home cooks. VERDICT Mistry's debut skillfully blends knockout recipes and career-spanning reflections. Highly recommended.

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