Chef Parvine
Parvine grew up in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, a small island in the Southwest Indian Ocean. Parvine speaks three languages-Mauritian Creole, French, and English-and understands Hindi/Urdu, from watching Bollywood movies and Pakistani dramas. She started cooking at the age of fourteen, not knowing how to make anything, but learned from her grandmother and eventually found her own way of mixing ingredients and grew to love making food. Parvine’s cuisine is Mauritian Creole, which has influences mainly from India and France. Her specialties include curry with pumpkin and pineapple, her very own tasty invention, and gato arouy – taro fritters she remembers buying from street vendors growing up in Mauritius.
Parvine taught enrichment cooking classes in an elementary school in Ithaca and at Cornell University for six years. A few years after moving to New Haven, she started volunteering at Sanctuary Kitchen and eventually became a regular chef there. She believes sharing food forms deep connections with others