Bollywood Kitchen from the Geffen Stayhouse

The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles has been leading the way with unique live streaming programming. Most if it, so far, has centered around magicians. Enter Sri Rao and Bollywood Kitchen, which is both a cooking show and a confessional. The show had its official opening night over the weekend and is now running through March 6th via their Geffen Stayhouse programming.

Rao is the author of 2017’s Bollywood Kitchen: Home-Cooked Indian Meals Paired with Unforgettable Bollywood Films. As the title suggests, food and film are paired in this book. We learn from him during the show that the book pays tribute to his mother by using many of her recipes.

During the course of his roughly 70-minute show – which streams live from his Manhattan apartment – Rao walks the audience through the creation of three different recipes: a variation of a Moscow Mule, chicken curry and chai affogato. While he allows us to cook along with him, he tells us about his upbringing in Pennyslvania as the son of immigrant parents.

As is certainly the case for many such children, he is seen as an “other” for not just his ethnicity, but for what he matures to realize is his homosexuality.

Throughout the stories he tells about his life and his parents with excerpts from some of his favorite Bollywood films that illustrate the points he’s making.

There are three ways to experience Bollywood Kitchen. The first is with the Chef’s Table ticket ($175 per household) which includes the Bollywood Box of ingredients, spices and recipe cards, the ability to be on-camera and cook with Sri, an autographed copy of his cookbook and a Vimeo link to watch the show after it is over.

The Bollywood Foodie ticket ($95 per household) gives you the full Bollywood Box and a streaming-only ticket for the show.

Lastly there is the Here for the Party ticket ($40 per household) which gives you a digital link to the recipes and you’re on your own for all the ingredients, but you can cook along and stream the show.

As a vegan, a few of the recipes were not things I would eat, though Rao does offer an alternative to the chicken curry with chana masala (a chickpea-based curry).

Whether you watch the show and cook or not, I strongly encourage you open the spices and get a good whiff of each of them. That fully puts you into the mood for Bollywood Kitchen. (Maybe the Mumbai Mule helps, too!)

Bollywood Kitchen is directed by Arpita Mukherjee.

Photo: Sri Rao in Bollywood Kitchen (Photo by Kyle Rosenberg/Courtesy Geffen Playhouse)