Tel Aviv, July 4 (IANS) Reena Pushkarna, celebrity chef, restaurateur and founder of the Tandoori restaurant chain in Israel, and Chairperson (Convenor) of the Israel Chapter of the Overseas Friends of BJP (OFBJP), heaped praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for remaining “the same simple personality” despite rising to the top office in India.

Recalling her personal experience of cooking for and serving the Prime Minister during his visit to Israel, Pushkarna told IANS that she first met him years earlier when he came as Gujarat Chief Minister for an agritech engagement, and his humility and simplicity have remained unchanged over the years.

“Even though today Modi ji is the Prime Minister, he still remains the same simple personality who, if he knows you by name, he knows you by name forever,” she said.

Pushkarna said she later had the opportunity to cater for PM Modi during his visit to Israel, where her team prepared meals for his tightly scheduled programme. She described it as a moment of continuity in a long association that began before he assumed national office, and said his food preferences reflect his simplicity. As a vegetarian, she said, his meals were built around traditional Indian flavours and masala chai.

Her journey in Israel, however, began long before these diplomatic and culinary intersections. More than four decades ago, Pushkarna arrived in the country and set out to introduce Indian cuisine to a largely unfamiliar audience. She initially started with vegetarian Indian food, believing it would resonate easily, but soon realised that Israeli food habits were more inclined towards meat-based dishes.

“First, it was vegetarian Indian cuisine, which did not really take off well with the Israelis, as they are more meat eaters. A year later, I opened Tandoori and haven’t looked back,” she said.

That shift marked the beginning of what would become one of the most recognised Indian restaurant brands in Israel. But the journey, she said, has never been linear. Over the years, she built a chain of restaurants across the country, only to see parts of it contract sharply in recent times.

The Covid-19 pandemic dealt the first major blow, followed by a prolonged regional conflict that further strained the hospitality sector. Several outlets had to be shut, and business operations were repeatedly disrupted. She also pointed to challenges in sourcing skilled labour from India, which has made restaurant operations increasingly difficult.

“I had a chain of restaurants all over, but because of Covid and because of the war situation in this country for nearly the last three years, we’ve had to close a few branches. That tells you about doing business in Israel. You’ve got to be ready for all the ups and downs,” she said.

Through these challenges, Pushkarna has described her work as “culinary diplomacy,” saying Indian food played a far greater role than just business in shaping cultural understanding between the two countries. In the early years, she said, Indian cuisine was unfamiliar to most Israelis, who often had limited exposure to India itself.

“People thought we lived on mountains. They wondered how we spoke such good English. And they wouldn’t touch Indian food with a pole,” she recalled.

To change that perception, she said she relied on familiarity and repetition. Chicken tikka and chicken Kasturi, she noted, were among the earliest dishes that helped bridge that gap. In the beginning, she often introduced them as complementary items to encourage people to try them, gradually building acceptance among local diners.

“A whole generation grew up on my chicken tikka and my chicken Kasturi,” she said.

Her culinary approach also required adaptation to local dietary laws. In keeping with kosher regulations, which prohibit mixing meat and dairy, she adjusted traditional Indian recipes to suit local requirements. This cultural adaptation eventually led her to open Kohinoor in Jerusalem in 1991, which she described as the world’s first Indian kosher restaurant.

However, the restaurant, too, was eventually impacted by external shocks. The collapse in tourism during the pandemic, followed by its slow recovery amid continued instability, led to its closure. She said the last few years have been among the most difficult for the hospitality sector in Israel.

Despite these setbacks, Pushkarna remains hopeful that conditions will improve if stability returns. She believes tourism, which is closely tied to peace and security in the region, will eventually bounce back.

“If the ceasefire situation remains, tourists will be back because this is a beautiful country. There’s a lot of history here, and there’s a lot to see in this country,” she said.

Pushkarna also spoke about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s appreciation for Indian cuisine, saying his family enjoys dishes such as chicken tikka, tikka masala and pilaf rice without coriander. She said she has witnessed a consistent sense of mutual respect between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Netanyahu, rooted not only in diplomacy but also in cultural familiarity.

Looking at the broader geopolitical landscape, she expressed hope that PM Modi could play a constructive role in promoting peace in the region, given his relationships with multiple leaders across the Middle East.

In one of the most striking recollections of her long career, Pushkarna said her restaurant in Tel Aviv once unknowingly became part of history. She said early meetings involving Norwegian, Israeli and Palestinian representatives, later linked to the Oslo peace process, were held at her Tandoori restaurant.

She said the significance only became clear later, when television broadcasts of the historic Rabin-Arafat handshake at the White House were followed by footage of her own restaurant in Tel Aviv. Newspapers, she recalled, later described it in a headline that read: “Peace talks heat up over hot curry. It can happen once again. Don’t be surprised.”

For Pushkarna, it remains a moment that captures the unexpected intersections of food, diplomacy and history, one she says could, perhaps, repeat itself again in the future.

–IANS

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