Ravinder Bhogal

Ravinder Bhogal is a food writer, restaurateur, British chef, journalist and stylist. She opened her first restaurant Jikoni in Marylebone, London in September 2016.

Bhogal's work and food spans flavours and culinary traditions from the Far East, India & South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa and Britain and she celebrates the idea of immigrant cuisine.

Ravinder has written several cookbooks, and writes a regular monthly column for the FT Weekend and Guardian Feast. Bhogal is contributing editor at Harper’s Bazaar, and regularly writes for The Observer Magazine, Guardian and Vogue online.

Early life
Born in Nairobi, Kenya, Bhogal grew up in London.

Books
Bhogal has authored three books. Her debut book Cook in Boots won the Gourmand World Cookbook Award for the UK's Best First Cookbook and was awarded the first runners-up prize of the World's Best First Cookbook at the Paris Cookbook Fair in February 2010. The Gourmand World Cookbook Awards feature around 26,000 books from 136 countries. Cook in Boots was released in 2009 by HarperCollins.

Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen, (Bloomsbury July 2020) won the 2021 IACP Cookbook Award, was shortlisted for the André Simon Award and a Fortnum & Mason Award for Best Cookbook.

Her latest, Comfort & Joy: Irresistible Pleasures from a Vegetarian Kitchen (Bloomsbury) was released on 25 May 2023. The Independent profiled Bhogal and Comfort & Joy. Columnist Avery Yale Kamila included Comfort & Joy on her list of the best plant-based books of 2023. Condé Naste Traveler writer Arati Menon profiled Bhogal and Comfort & Joy. Fordham University included Comfort & Joy on its list of recommendations from its English faculty.

Television appearances
Bhogal made her first TV appearance when she won a competition in search of the new Fanny Cradock, judged by Gordon Ramsay and Angela Hartnett on series 3 of The F Word in 2007.

Ravinder travelled the world to investigate the journeys of different foods and farming practices in Channel 4's "Food: What's in your Basket" with co-host Jay Rayner and has also hosted Ravinder's Kitchen, a culinary TV series that premiered in October 2013 on TLC.

Awards and achievements
Bhogal has twice been included in the Evening Standard Progress 1000 list as one of London's leading influencers of progress and diversity in the capital. Ravinder won the Asian Women of Achievement Award in Association with RBS in Media in 2013 a Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best First Cookbook, and the 2021 IACP Cookbook Award for Chefs and Restaurants.

Her debut restaurant, Jikoni, was ranked in the top 100 UK Restaurants by the National Restaurant Awards and achieved a place in the Michelin Guide in the same year. Jikoni was more recently ranked No19 by Squaremeal in London’s Top 100 Restaurants 2022, and in Time Out’s Top 100 in 2023.

In 2021 Jikoni was the first independent restaurant in the UK to be certified Carbon Neutral