I was honoured to be named Ottawa Chef of the Year in 2008. My Coconut Lagoon team and I have won gold, silver, and bronze medals at both the regional and national cooking competitions of the Canadian Culinary Championships. I am also extremely proud to be the culinary director of the Ottawa charity, Food for Thought, and to have received an Outstanding Individual Philanthropist Award and a United Way Community Builder Award in 2020 “for the work were doing in addressing food insecurity in the city”. In 2022 I received the Order of Ottawa and an honorary degree from Algonquin College, where I occasionally teach classes. I share these honour with the extraordinary team I have the pleasure to work with at Food for Thought. I am the author of Coconut Lagoon, Recipes from a South Indian Kitchen (Figure 1, 2019) and have a second cookbook, My Thali, due to be published in 2023.