Vikas Khanna’s journey began in Amritsar with family cooking and small-scale food work, long before he became executive chef at New York’s Junoon. In his own recollection, a visit to a hotel buffet made professional cooking feel like a possible future. Decades later, during India’s 2020 COVID-19 lockdown, concern about interrupted food-ration deliveries—and a much wider response to his appeal for help—led him to start Feed India.
Amritsar: family food and an early taste of catering
Khanna’s authorized excerpt from Barkat traces his earliest food memories to Amritsar, where his family’s cooking and food work were part of everyday life. His mother tried small catering ventures, and the family sold bhature-choley to schoolchildren at Vivek Public School on Mall Road. Khanna remembers the effort as chaotic: food could arrive at room temperature, but the work gave him an early, practical connection to feeding people.
Bloomsbury’s author biography adds the wider setting of family feasts, seasonal Punjabi produce and his grandmother’s home cooking. It also records that Khanna started the Lawrence Gardens banquet and catering business. These beginnings were not a polished route into fine dining; they were a combination of home cooking, family enterprise and learning by doing.
The hotel buffet that made professional cooking tangible
In the Barkat excerpt, Khanna recalls that an uncle took him to the Maurya Sheraton in New Delhi. The buffet’s presentation, crockery and warm breads—and the chef checking the spread—made a strong impression. Khanna remembers thinking, “It was the place where I wanted to be!”
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His uncle also explained that professional chefs trained for the work. As Khanna quotes him: “All you need is training, guidance and education to be one of these chefs.” The visit gave Khanna a direction to pursue, rather than simply a fascination with restaurant food.
Training, New York and Junoon
Khanna went on to study hotel management at the Welcomgroup Graduate School of Hotel Administration and later studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, according to Bloomsbury. The MICHELIN Guide’s 2025 profile says he trained at places including Taj Hotels before leaving that stability for New York.
The move was difficult. The MICHELIN Guide recounts periods of homelessness, dishwashing and cleaning homes as Khanna tried to establish himself in the city. He eventually became executive chef at Junoon, which earned a Michelin star while he led its kitchen. Bloomsbury says the restaurant received the recognition for three consecutive years; that is Junoon’s restaurant recognition, not an individual Michelin star awarded to Khanna.
Why Khanna started Feed India in 2020
During India’s COVID-19 lockdown in 2020, Khanna worried that ration deliveries could stop reaching old-age homes, leprosy centres and orphanages he had worked with. In an interview with NDTV Food, he said that responses to his social-media appeal revealed a need far beyond those institutions. He recalled, “This gave me the inspiration to start the Feed India campaign.” India Gate joined the initiative, according to the same account.
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The campaign’s name reflected that broad purpose. In an interview reported by India Today, Khanna said, “I wanted to feed my country, hence the name Feed India.”
How Feed India distributed food
Feed India used different delivery methods for different circumstances. The accounts describe both food for institutions and direct distribution to people in transit:
- Dry rations for institutions: India Today reported that facilities with kitchens received dry ration so they could prepare meals themselves.
- Cooked food for people on the move: Khanna described meals for people travelling on highways and at stations. He also tested dishes for how long they would last in hot weather.
- Food stations and transit points: NDTV Food reported that fuel pumps became “Food Stations,” with food and water also sent to bus stops, trains, train stations and people walking on highways.
NDTV Food’s 2022 article reported that Feed India had provided 20 million meals during the pandemic. That is the figure in that account, not an independently audited final total; another published figure is not reconciled with it, and the available accounts do not establish a common counting method. Meals should not be read as a count of individual people served.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Where to read Khanna’s fuller account
Khanna’s book, Barkat: The Inspiration and Story Behind One of the World’s Largest Food Drives, Feed India, expands on the personal memories and campaign story. The childhood scenes above come from an authorized excerpt published by Scroll.in with credit to Penguin Books India.
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Sources: Scroll.in’s authorized excerpt from Barkat (27 December 2021); Bloomsbury Publishing India’s Vikas Khanna biography; MICHELIN Guide profile (1 May 2025); NDTV Food interview (updated 20 August 2022); India Today interview (5 July 2020).
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