Vikram Sunderam facts for kids

Vikram Sunderam (born in 1967) is a famous chef from India who also lives in America. He is known for being the head chef at a restaurant called Rasika in Washington, D.C. He even won a special prize called the James Beard Award for his amazing cooking! Chef Sunderam also helped write a cookbook named after his restaurant.

Becoming a Chef

Vikram Sunderam grew up and went to school in Mumbai, India. He thought about studying different things like engineering or medicine. But the cooking school was the first place to accept him, so he decided to become a chef!

After culinary school, he started working for the Taj Group of hotels. He worked in Mumbai for six years, learning a lot about cooking. Then, he moved to London and worked there for 14 years. For eight of those years, he was the main chef at a well-known London restaurant called the Bombay Brasserie.

Opening Famous Restaurants

Chef Sunderam teamed up with a person named Ashok Bajaj and his company, Knightsbridge Group. Together, they opened their first Rasika restaurant in December 2005. It was located in downtown Washington, D.C., in an area called Penn Quarter.

Six years later, they opened a second Rasika restaurant in another part of D.C., in the West End neighborhood. People really loved Rasika! In 2014, Chef Sunderam won the James Beard Award for "Best Chef: Mid-Atlantic" because of his great work at Rasika. Even President Barack Obama celebrated his birthday at Rasika twice!

In August 2016, Chef Sunderam and the Knightsbridge Group opened a new restaurant called Bindaas. This restaurant is in the Cleveland Park area of Washington and focuses on delicious Indian street food. They opened a second Bindaas location in Foggy Bottom in November 2017.

Sharing His Recipes

On October 10, 2017, Chef Sunderam released his own cookbook! It's called Rasika: Flavors of India. He wrote the book with Ashok Bajaj and another chef and author named David Hagedorn. The cookbook even includes the recipe for palak chaat, which is Rasika's famous crispy spinach dish. Many people praised the cookbook because it made Chef Sunderam's amazing recipes easy for people to cook at home.