Celebrity Chef Santosh Shah Tours America

As a child, Chef Santosh Shah supported his family by selling bread at his hometown bus park to support his single mother. A full day’s meal was not guaranteed. Today, he is an international celebrity chef and winner of the prestigious BBC MasterChef Professional Rematch (2021) and a finalist of the BBC MasterChef Professional (2020). And he is back in the USA for his 2nd Pop-Up Dinner Tour of an exquisite 9-course Nepali fine dining experience. The tour was developed and produced by Kashish Das Shrestha, a writer and events producer who is a close advisor to the Chef and has also been helping the Chef in the kitchen throughout the tour. Chef Santosh’s first US Tour was in February was fully sold out with waiting lists in all the 8 cities. The current tour, his second, has four stops, and they have sold out fast, too. The dinner is priced between $185 to $225 per person. “The main motivation for me to do these events is to always use my skills and my events to promote Nepali cuisine and demonstrate how it can be elevated. And I am so happy that Nepali food entrepreneurs in America are able to use these events to promote Nepali food in their cities and states,” Chef Santosh Shah said. He has also authored the cookbook AYLA, which has allowed people around the world to try their hand at Nepali cooking. The book is available online on Amazon and Walmart. “When you realize Chef Santosh started working in commercial kitchens when he was barely a teenager, and spent his youth working with some of the best chefs in the world, it’s hardly a surprise that by his late 20s he was able to establish himself as a top award winning chef with a distinct culinary vision and skill. There is a reason no one in the world is serving the kind of menu he is, and why he has been able to give Nepali cuisine an unprecedented space in the global culinary discourse,” said Kashish Das Shrestha, who has written about culture and food for over 2 decades and is currently working on a food history book about MoMo, the popular Himalayan dumpling. Back home in Nepal, Chef Santosh has established a restaurant called Mithila Thali, the first to promote and present ethnic Mithila cuisine from Nepal’s southern plains. There, he has specifically hired single mothers to work in the restaurant and has offered their children full education scholarships. “Single mothers have very difficult lives in our communities so I wanted to make sure I supported them somehow,” Chef Santosh said. Within a year, Mithila Thali has grown into four locations. If anyone is interested in hosting a multi-course pop-up dinner event with Chef Santosh this Fall, you can message Uproar Production @TurnItUproar on instagram.