7 Women-Owned Businesses You Need to Know in NYC
By Swathi Reddy
Updated on 3/11/2022 at 2:17 PM
When chef Surbhi Sahni, who opened Tagmo last fall, landed in NYC in the late ‘90s, she was startled to find herself heartbroken upon leaving her beloved India. “When you come here to start building a life, that’s when you realize that you took the support system you had for granted.” So Sahni set about creating that sense of community in her adopted home—through her food.
A 20-year veteran of the fine-dining scene in NYC (Surbhi was part of Tamarind’s launch team and oversaw creative teams at lauded spots like Devi and Tulsi), and prior to that, she led culinary teams in the hotel kitchens of Delhi, India’s capital city. An interest in the arts held appeal from a young age, but cooking as a creative endeavor did not—until a conversation with her father, an artist himself, helped her see otherwise.
Her arrival in NYC to pursue higher education offered wider exposure to Western-centric cuisines, but resulted in her gaining greater appreciation for cuisine from the diaspora. “It created a deep respect for the regional differences in Indian food,” says Sahni. “Until you really start cooking from them and thinking about how these different communities have created these spaces for themselves—how the Indian diet has been formulated for the Indians living within those communities specifically is pretty amazing.”
