Introducing Arina (And a few other things)!

I am happy to share that the A Perfect Bite family is growing.

You have already met Theyie through her writings on this blog. Now I would like to introduce the newest face to join the APB family.

Arina Suchde, might be known amongst food circles for her stint with Tulleeho and the many workshops she has conducted for them. I met her via them when they backed me up for a workshop I did. What I did not know then and most do not know even now, however, is that Arina has been a foodie for most of her life.

A vegetarian who does some mean veggie cooking (think Chimichurri Corn Sandwich, Veggie Mayo Sandwich a la Arina, Sandwich Uttapam and Idli Bhaji (Pav Bhaji flavoured idli that we are dying to try), Arina trips on cooking with garlic, pepper and potatoes. She loves the aromas of sautéing garlic, french fries cooking in hot oil, fresh lemon grass, rich chocolate cake and the sound of water splashing on a hot dosa tawa, potato wedges sizzling in the oven, potatoes hitting hot oil and veggies being stir fried are music to her ears. In fact the words DEEP FRY – Brings a sparkle to her eyes and water to her mouth! (But we knew that with the French fries!) I would like to invite you to join Arina every Thursday (starting today) as she follows delicious aromas to check out foodie things around Mumbai in “Around Town with Arina”. She will dish up the latest cooking classes, find the foodiest finds and suss out scrumptious offers.


For those of you who are curious about her, Theyie is the opposite of Arina. She really is Mad about Meat. Don’t believe me? You will when I tell you she trips on cooking with meat (like we didn’t know), bamboo shoot, axone (pronounce Ahone this is a Naga fermented bean paste) gojujang, angothi (ahoti) a Naga ingredient that goes well with beef, she loves the smell of roasting meat, and the smell of beef at that precise moment when the fat melts. The sound of meat spitting on firewood is music to her ears. Her sole vegetarian pleasures are Bhindi and dal – which she can have in any form and in copius amounts. Theyie is mystified that anyone would pay to eat vegetarian food at a restaurant, cooks fabulously , is a fountain of knowledge on Naga cuisine, and loves to exercise her appalling Hindi with Natasha (my daughter) every chance she gets. In case you have missed it, Theyie writes lovely foodie letters about Naga cuisine (mostly) to me as Dear Rushina every Monday and goes Mad Over Meat on Tuesdays.

The Meaty bite and the Veggie bite at our celebratory lunch at Salt water cafe.

Our weekly ‘strategy’ meetings are a riot, with the first 15 mins spent deciding what to order (or what to cook), and constant distractions as we update each other on what we ate while apart or something we cooked or ... well you get the picture....

But slowly with each new meeting, I get to know them better, suss out strengths, push them to discover new horizons for their talent and in doing that I hope that I am nurturing the foundation of a company out of the years of hard work eating, drinking and writing! No seriously! It is great to have such fabulous enthusiastic women work with me and I am looking forward to it... Watch this space, we have lots of great stuff coming.

And for those of you not in the know, A Perfect Bite recently got itself a spanking new PAGE ON FACEBOOK, please, do join to stay updated on the antics we get up to behind the scenes! In fact here is a behind the scenes look at the Cupcake shoot we did for mE Magazine!

A Perfect Bite (AKA Rushina)