Ritu Dalmia is an Indian chef and restaurateur who specializes in Italian cuisine and has opened several restaurants in various cities across India as well as in other countries such as Delhi, Mumbai, London and Milan. She has also written books about cooking and appeared on various television cooking shows. She is very outspoken about LGBTQ rights in India.
Wiki/Biography
Ritu Dalmia was born on Tuesday, September 26, 1972, in Kolkata, West Bengal, India (50 years old as of 2022). Her zodiac sign is Libra. She attended the Jesuit Convent in Delhi. She started cooking at home when she was 9 years old and also tried non-vegetarian food, even though she belongs to a vegetarian family. After completing formal schooling at a missionary school, she entered the family stone business at the age of 16. She must regularly travel to Italy, Egypt and South American countries to purchase business materials. Gradually, she became interested in Italian food and began to learn about it. She opened her first restaurant in Delhi at the age of 21 and has been working as a chef and restaurateur ever since.
family
She comes from a Marwari family.
Parents and siblings
Her father’s name was Gautam Dalmia, a granite and marble importer. She has a brother.
Photos of Ritu Dalmia’s mother
Ritu Dalmia’s family portrait
husband and children
She is unmarried and has no children.
sexual orientation
She is a lesbian.
Chef/Restaurateur Career
In 1993, at the age of 21, she opened her first Italian restaurant in Delhi’s Hauz Khas village and named it “Mezza Luna”. She opened it with 5 lakh rupees she had saved while working for her father. It was an Italian restaurant, and she would go to Italy almost every week to purchase ingredients for the restaurant; however, the restaurant failed because she could not find many customers for Italian dishes. She discussed her restaurant’s failure in an interview and said,
“MezzaLuna closed within two years because the market wasn’t ready for Italian food.”
In 1995, she sold Mezza Luna and moved to London to open Vama, an Indian restaurant. She teamed up with another chef, Andy Verma, to open the restaurant. It was so successful that it earned her a reputation as a great female restaurateur. However, success was not easy for Ritu in the early days of opening her shop in London and she found it difficult to survive as she had very little money. In an interview, she spoke about this and said:
“I struggled a lot in the UK. For the first two months, I couldn’t even pay the grocery bill. But in the restaurant industry, at least you don’t go hungry.”
In 2000, she returned to India and once again opened an Italian restaurant in Delhi and named it DIVA. This time, the restaurant succeeded. Italians living in India especially come to this restaurant because Ritu focuses on home-style cooking with fresh ingredients. However, traveling between Delhi and London became very hectic for her as she wanted to devote all her time to the Delhi restaurant, so she sold her stake in Vama Restaurants in 2002 to focus on DIVA. She opened 5 more restaurants under the DIVA restaurant chain in Delhi. Two of them are called “Latitude 28” and “Cafe Diva”. In 2017, she opened an Indian restaurant in Milan, Italy, and named it “Cittamani”. In 2019, she collaborated with the famous Italian chef Viviana Varese to open another restaurant in Milan and named it “Spica”.
Ritu Dalmia (left) and Viviana Varese
In 2018, she opened a DIVA chain of Italian restaurants at Andores Resort & Spa in Goa. In 2021, she opened an Italian restaurant under her own restaurant chain DIVA in Lower Parel, Mumbai. She named it the “DIVA Tasting Room.” In the same year, she opened a pizza shop called “Motodo” at Jio World Drive in Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai. She has also served as the host of two famous cooking shows – Italian Khana on NDTV Good Times and Traveling Diva. She has published three books – Italian Khaana, Traveling DIVA and DIVA Green: Vegetarian Recipes.
Applicant objects to section 377
At the age of 23, she realized she was a lesbian and told her parents about it. Her parents were shocked when they learned of this; however, they never made her aware that being a lesbian was taboo. In 2016, she and three others (hotel owner Aman Nath, dancer Navtej Singh Johar and businesswoman Ayesha Kapur )) together filed a petition in the Supreme Court of India against Article 377 of the Indian Constitution. Section 377 criminalized homosexuality, and in 2018, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court struck down Section 377, decriminalizing same-sex relationships. She talked about this in an interview and said,
“Victims, especially women, don’t speak out and they’re afraid to sign petitions. So, the day I was asked, I didn’t think much of it. I’ve been recognized in my career and I’m grateful, but this For selfish reasons: reputation, money. When the verdict came in 2018 – a verdict I thought I would never see in my lifetime – I was numb and cried. For me, there is nothing like that moment It’s more important.”
Awards
- She was included in Forbes India’s first W-Power Trailblazers list in 2017.
- In 2016, she was named one of the top 25 chefs in India by the Federation of Indian Culinary Societies.
- In 2018, her restaurant DIVA was listed as one of the 50 largest restaurants in India according to Condé Nast Traveler India’s list.
- In 2017, she was awarded Italy’s highest civilian award, the Ordine Della Stella d’Italia.
- Her restaurant DIVA was named Favorite Italian Restaurant (Independent) at the 2019 Peaklife Food Awards.
- She was awarded the delWine Top 10 Indian Women of Wine (WOW) award in 2019.
- She received the Sunday Standard Devi Award in 2017.
Chef Ritu Dalmia received the prestigious Sunday Standard Devi Award from Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh. #proudmoment @chefritudalmia pic.twitter.com/RM6THkUPkL
— DIVA Restaurants (@divarestaurants) December 19, 2017
Facts/Trivia
- She didn’t take any formal cooking classes, but learned to cook by experimenting with food.
- Her father was not happy with her restaurant business; however, her mother was very supportive.
- She considers herself a workaholic, control freak, and detail-oriented.
- Her friend Serra Turgutcan taught her how to cook Italian food.
- She has strongly opposed government policies during the national lockdown following Covid-19.
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education