Waris Ahluwalia

EVERYONE EATS        |        DEC 30, 2020

Waris
Ahluwalia

FOUNDER OF HOUSE OF WARIS

Waris Ahluwalia, actor & designer, is driven by a deep and abiding desire to create stories, products and experiences that captivate, transport, and shift perception. In 2007, he founded House of Waris - a company dedicated to exploring design through craftsmanship. Waris was nominated for the Vogue Fashion Fund and soon after awarded the CFDA Incubator grant.

From fashion campaigns to design collaborations, over the years Waris has worked with brands such Kenzo, The Kooples, Gap, Tory Burch, Gucci, Holt Renfrew and APC to name a few. As an actor, Waris has worked with acclaimed directors such as Wes Anderson, Spike Lee, and Luca Guadagnino. In the Fall of 2016, the Mayor of New York City proclaimed October 19th as Waris Ahluwalia Day for his work in spreading tolerance and inclusivity through his creative and social impact endeavors.

INTERVIEW BY ROSIE ELLIS
PHOTOGRAPHS BY CHRISTOPHER WRAY MCCANN

BREAKFAST

I have overnight soaked chia with oats (I call it choats). The flavors are added the next day in the morning – either diced apples, bananas, blueberries, cinnamon, crushed walnuts and then I sprinkle a little moringa powder on it.

I save eggs for the weekend. (I make really delicious eggs.) My weekend egg situation is typically a slow scramble that requires a lot of stirring, with lots of spices. We’ll either saute an onion or some thyme, or make a tomato paste. Lately, I’ve been doing a mushroom mix – porcini, button, etc. In a non-pandemic world, I’m working out more, so it’s more eggs during the week and generally a smoothie as well.

I don’t do coffee – I never have. I never liked the idea of being dependent on any substance for my mood or influencing what I can and cannot do. When I get up, I drink water and I’ll have our Sweet Clarity tea. It’s our focus blend and it’s a delicious, smoky non-caffeinated tea. It contains cardamom, rhodiola, ginger, sweet basil, tulsi and it’s my favorite way to start my day. It’s very grounding; for someone trying to get off of caffeine they might like it as it’s got body – it’s not light in taste.

That’s my morning. Choats and Sweet Clarity...

LUNCH

I eat around 1 or 2 o’clock. Now, lunch is a series of leftovers, maybe a salad with some baby spinach and roasted vegetables. That’s the pandemic lunch. A non-pandemic lunch was usually a salad. Our office was in Soho, so if it was warm out, I’d grab a salad and sit on the benches by Lafayette Street and Spring. If I was having a lunch meeting, it was usually at Sant Ambroeus. I’m religious about meals and I’m also a snacker, but a very healthy snacker, so it’s mostly just raw nuts.

DINNER

Dinner has seen a stark shift. I used to eat out pretty much seven nights a week. These restaurants weren’t just restaurants, they were our community centers, our canteens. When you eat out professionally, you get to know everybody and it becomes a small town versus ‘New York City’. Some of my go-tos included: Estela, Omen Azen, Lovely Day, Cafe Altro Paradiso, EN Japanese Brasserie, Cafe Cluny, and the Lighthouse Outpost on Mulberry. It’s a secret spot, where you sit on a counter. At Le Turtle, when it was open, my favorite place to sit was up the steps in that little room. Frankies 457 is fantastic. These were all places where I was a regular.

In the last eight months, I’ve been out to eat maybe four times. My girlfriend cooks almost every night. I’m sure that if I was alone, I probably would be ordering in a lot more. She roasts a lot of squash and veggies and makes a lot of soups. Some of her pandemic hits include: lemongrass ginger chicken pho, Sunday lemon roast chicken with acorn and butternut squash, tagine and couscous, turmeric chili yogurt marinated chicken … she’s big into Mediterannean food, so it’s often things with tahini. I’m in good hands. (I left out that she makes the choats…)

Early on in the pandemic when everyone was in their homes, we did a cooking show called Dinner Club for the Reluctant Chef. Because there are so many other things that I do, I don’t know if cooking is one that gives me joy. I love food, I love eating but I just want to eat, I don’t want to prepare my food. My world revolves around food and around eating and if I don’t have good meals, that’s the first thing that will put me in a bad mood. There’s only so many days left in my life, and I don’t have time to sacrifice for bad meals.

DESSERT

I have a sweet tooth, but I also have an unfortunate understanding of the evil that is sugar. It’s such a bummer, I wish to remain ignorant. I love dark chocolate, I used to eat it for breakfast years ago, and there’s always dark chocolate and dates in the fridge. Honey Mama’s is one of my favorites in terms of the dark chocolate game. They’ve really nailed it.

SPEED ROUND

Any foods you avoid?
Fried foods. That said, while I won’t order french fries, I will eat yours.

Favorite place to shop for kitchenwares?
Broadway Panhandler, but sadly it closed.

Favorite neighborhood hole in the wall?
L’estudio on Hester Street. I remember sitting there last summer thinking wow, I wish this was my neighborhood place. Hester street isn’t the prettiest street, it’s nothing to write home about, but in that moment, L’Estudio really nailed the hole-in-the-wall vibe.

There are other restaurants that I wish were in my neighborhood, like Rucola, which is also a great joint.

 

Most overrated food trend?

What is an acai bowl? I don’t want to eat my smoothie with a spoon.

 

Go-to cookbook?
Cooking for Artists by Mina Stone and Eating Out Loud by Eden Grinshpan.

Dream dinner guest?
Salvadore Dali is an obvious one – god only knows what he would talk about. And then Nico, from The Velvet Underground, just sulking in a corner. To balance out Nico, I think I’d place Dolly Parton at the head of the table. (Who else would you want saying grace other than Dolly Parton?) Since this is going to be a fictional dead-or-alive thing, someone who I think would be fun is Ricky Bobby from Talladega Nights. Can you just imagine the conversation between Ricky Bobby and Dali? I’d also throw in Allan Ginsberg. I would of course invite my girlfriend, Maddie. And she’d be mad at the next one, but I’d have Anna Karina from Pierrot le Fou. To add a little weight into the room (so it’s not all just folly) I’d want David Attenbourgh there. He would probably welcome everybody. Maybe Faye Dunway from Bonnie & Clyde. And John Belushi, because you want someone to just be throwing things and partying. That’s my dinner party.

What’s the best dish you make?
Dhal.

Any vitamins?
I make a blend of tea using ashwagandha, dandelion root and astragalus. I also make a blend of fourteen different mushrooms that’s full of Tb4, cordyceps, chaga and lion's mane.

Favorite way to work off a big meal?
To go for a walk – but a particular walk – from the 1st arrondissement to the courtyard at the Louvre; cross the Pont des Arts bridge into the 6th arrondissement, walk through the 6th and over to Cafe de Flore for a tea. That would be my ideal way to work off my meal – even if I had a steak in New York, I’d like to then walk through Paris.

Go-to market or grocery store?
In a non-pandemic world, I love getting my ingredients from different vendors in Rome.

Last place you ordered delivery from?
Jack’s Wife Freda.

If you were a food you’d be [blank]?
My girlfriend says I’d be a chili lime cashew.

Five items always in your kitchen:
Chili flakes, tahini, dark chocolate, dates, tea (and teapots).

 

Do you have a secret food hack?

I do not, and if I did, I couldn’t reveal any secrets...

 

Go-to comfort food?
Dhal, rice, yogurt, mint chutney and pickled red onions. (My mom’s dhal.) The best sign of a good Indian restaurant is if they make great dhal. My mom makes her own yogurt and it’s ridiculously delicious. It’s so good that it would be disrespectful to eat it as an accompaniment. Then she makes her own mint chutney from the yard, where she grows fresh mint. So that’s my go-to comfort food ... and then also pizza.

Recent food discovery?
Fox nuts.

Best snack between meals?
Raw almonds.

Culinary splurge?
Farm fresh vegetables. That’s something I discovered during the pandemic, and they’re delicious. Swiss chard is so flavorful. I don’t know if that’s a splurge versus that’s how it should always be. I remember my friends in London were getting farm fresh boxes fifteen years ago.

Favorite restaurant?
There’s a restaurant in Geneva where the walls are covered with art – it’s been there forever. A lot of history has gone through that place, you can feel that. If those walls could talk… and they’ve got one of my favorite bars connected to the restaurants.

Where do you most feel like The Regular?
It’s funny, when I was on safari years ago with a good friend, we always talked about The Big Five (animals to see: elephant, lion, rhinoceros, etc.) and then I started joking about how I have a Big Five of restaurants that I go to in New York. Somehow, at Omen Azen, even if you don’t go for months they still remember your name. Other obvious places would be Bar Pitti, Cafe Cluny, Lucien, Estela, Hearth, Orchard Townhouse, Cafe Altro Paradiso. These are our generation’s community centres – I don’t think they’re specific to me. A lot of people would say they feel most like The Regular here.

THIRD SCOOP

Your love of food came from your mother – how did she instill this in you, and at what point did this become a passion of your own?

I grew up eating at home every night. My mom was a teacher and she would come home and make dinner. She was one of those people who would make a meal and it wasn’t a to-do, it wasn’t an effort. There’s an ease and a grace that accompanies it. She didn’t give me lessons, I just watched her. Every time I make dhal, I call her and say okay, mom – what am I doing? I know how to make a dhal, but it’s a habit now and she walks me through it on the phone every time.

To say you have a tea company feels like an understatement. The company is steeped in values like supporting artisanship, building community and promoting discovery. How did you think about developing this foundation and what should customers of your products be taking away, aside from the obvious love for your products?

The steeped in values part is tied to the last question, it's the values that came from home, from my mother; how she raised me and the values that then found a way into my work and my life. The caring and empathy and the interest that other people have shown towards me, I’m now reflecting outwards to the world.

I’m always fascinated when I’m sitting with someone who is much older and much wiser, in their eighties or nineties, and they’re asking me questions. I’m looking at them with such awe and fascination thinking, I hope to be as curious as you. And then you sit with someone who is half your age who doesn’t care about what you do, and is only talking about themselves, and thinking that’s what I hope I’m not, and that’s what I hope I never will be in the future.

That’s where the building of community comes from. This idea of people in cities, of progress and innovation, of everyone in their apartments and everyone in their homes and the nuclear family, it’s the destruction of humanity. We’re meant to live in communities, we’re meant to be with friends, loved ones, extended family. It makes life richer, having multi-generational families, where the grandparents are always there, not just ‘we’re going to visit the grandparents on a National Lampoon’s holiday’. It’s why everyone talks about a European lifestyle or an Asian lifestyle with some envy; we’ve sacrificed so much of that for the sake of progress, innovation, and a false independence. We do that with everything. We’re so obsessed with hacks and innovation, and the speed of things that we’ve forgotten the glory of what it is to be a human being and that glory exists in places like India, Rome, Paris, Istanbul, like the cities that I’ve mentioned. They are great cities – I’m not just comparing a city to the Cotswolds, I’m comparing a city to a city, but where the people have held their values and support each other.

That’s what I did when I worked in fashion as well, it was the same idea: the artisanship, building community. I worked with craftsmen, I knew their children, I ate with them every day. It was all tied. Now, I know the guy that makes my suits, I know the guy that makes my shoes – none of it’s segmented. This way of life is tied, it’s the thread that goes through every element of my life.

If I’m going to make something, I’m only going to [follow this practice]. We designed our own packaging so that it wouldn’t need extra packaging that you’d have to throw out, we have a zero plastic policy. We designed our tins so that you could reuse them, refill them, keep them. With what’s inside, if you know the brand, or if you’ve come across the brand, we’ve only existed in the sphere of quality. ‘High quality’ is not something we typically talk about, because that’s an inherent part of it. Why make a product if it’s not quality? Unfortunately that’s not the world we live in, so I get it, but it’s about fighting a way of life that we’ve accepted in this country.

Speed and phones and technology and deadlines, this need to be constantly working has led to the greatest number of cases of sleep disorders, digestive issues and anxiety in our history. In our history! What is this progress for? What is this innovation you speak of if we’re suffering because of it? My work has always been about not forgetting our traditions. Look, I like flying on planes, I use phones, I’m on FaceTimes, I like my apps, they’re brilliant – but I’ve been able to balance that existence and that’s something that we have not been able to do. We have great pharmaceuticals. They’re gods, they’re mythical gods and often we want a quick answer and we want a quick fix, and so we take a pill. The reason that pill works so fast is because it targets whatever is ailing you, and then you get a quick response. But what that does, is it creates an imbalance in the rest of your body, which is called a side effect. And then that side effect is met with another pill, and now you have more side effects. You have pills on pills on pills which creates a level of toxicity in your body that only matches the level of toxicity around you: getting to work in the morning, paying your bills, relationships. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, we live like this. A better world is possible, and not through innovation and not through progress. We had it.

What does the process of developing your tea products look like?

The process is laborious. It’s very slow and it involves tasting after tasting after tasting. I rely on our team of herbalists to help me understand the ingredients that we’re using, the reason that we’re using them, and their history, but I rely on myself primarily for the taste. The difference with our stuff is that it tastes delicious. They all have individual flavor profiles, they’re each a character in a movie and they don’t taste just “herbal”.

Sweet Clarity has the most delightful, smoky body to it, the aroma is incredible. Love Conquers All uses saffron – saffron is one of the most expensive herbs and is usually used very lightly in food, it’s like a truffle. Our saffron comes from a village in Afghanistan. It’s a very specific village and it’s a friend's company. Wherever we don’t know the partners, we get to know them. A lot of times, there’s very limited places where you can get the ingredients that we’re looking for. [For Love Conquers all], we combined that with pomegranate flowers, hibiscus, damiana, shatavari, rose, vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, orange blossom. We didn’t hold back… we would have meetings and I would say, can we bring the hibiscus down by 4% and raise the vanilla by 2%? That’s what it came to. There’s nothing like Love Conquers All. It’s whole leaf, whole flower, whole root. And then when you taste it … it’s sort of like when you eat fruit in this country regularly and then you go somewhere else where they haven’t destroyed agriculture and you taste a strawberry or a cucumber and you’re like wow, how is this possible? What did they do to this?. But actually, it’s what they didn’t do to it.

I love the rule that you never eat while sitting at a computer but it differs from a very overworked American mentality. What other traditions do you bring from other cultures you’ve experienced into your day to day –– in our outside of the kitchen.

When I was making jewelry, my craftsmen would always take tea breaks and I would ask what they were doing. One day I joined and they served me tea, and it was the thing that brought us together. You would sit with them, talk with them, eye-to-eye. It wasn’t a coffee, you didn’t have it whilst you were walking. Meet me for a coffee really means I’ve only got five minutes for you, whereas meet me for a tea means let’s sit down, I’ve got time. We’ve mishandled and misunderstood the value of time, that’s all it is.

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