The Posdol Blog
POSDOL came from this idea: a pinch of salt and a dash of lime are what make all the difference to any dish. Not the protein, not the technique — the small things. This blog is about those small things. The specific version, for people who are actually building something in food.
A chef at IHM taught me a ratio I have never forgotten. Four parts spinach, two parts coriander, one part mint, half a part green chilli. Not a recipe. A ratio. Which means it works at any scale, any quantity, any day. The aloo palak built on that ratio — with the story behind it.
Most early-stage operators review financials monthly. By the time the bank account tells the story, the window to correct it is already closed. What daily P&L tracking actually looks like in a small kitchen.
The same meal, two different bodies, two different outcomes. Preventive genomics is making personalised nutrition specific enough to be useful. What we actually know — and what we do not.
Fast food chains achieve their cost structure through volume. Full-service restaurants justify their margins through experience. A small, independent QSR has access to neither advantage. This is a structural problem.
Some recipes teach technique. Some teach patience. This one teaches both. The correct quantity of ghee in sambar is always slightly more than you think it should be.
Eight items. The temptation to expand the menu after the first few weeks is real and almost always wrong. Expansion before the core menu is operationally solid is where most QSR concepts begin unravelling.
1 March 2003. The match was on. Spinach, peas, potato, green chilli — bound by the starch in the potato alone. No cornflour, no bread. The ratio that makes this work every time.
In Mumbai you make onion pakoras when the monsoon hits. In Chennai you make plantain bajji. Same instinct, different logic. Two recipes, two cities, the exact batter ratio for both.
Lumpy, cold, undermixed. The IHM practical that explained why most restaurant tempura doesn't get the crunch right — and the technique that fixes it.
The potato cooks in the oil first, slow and patient, until it absorbs enough fat to hold the egg without fighting it. Made for my brother. The tortilla that became the one I always come back to.
You don't need a tandoor. A tawa, a piece of coal, and thirty seconds. The technique from Calypso Restaurant, Navi Mumbai — and why it works better than most tandoor versions anyway.
A small cup. Yam and raw banana in a thick coconut-yogurt gravy, ten rupees outside school in Chennai. I spent twenty years trying to replicate it. This is the version that finally got close.
Fragrant, mildly sweet, fruit and nuts in the pilaf — but done without tipping into dessert territory. Learning this from Chef Senthil was a lesson in restraint as much as technique.
Power out for two days. This is the khichdi made by candlelight with what was left in the house — and why that version tasted better than any carefully planned meal before or since.
He was not fast. He had learned where not to waste energy. The phulka that taught me how repetition becomes technique — plus the vinegar salad that goes alongside.
Only in Tamil Nadu. Only in summer. Only with raw mango so sour it makes your jaw work. The version that appears once a year and disappears before you think to write it down. Written down now.
Coconut chicken curry, mushroom ghee roast, jeera rice. Not every Sunday — the Sundays that count. Three recipes that have to be made together, because each one changes how the others taste.
Bhetki kalia, musur dal, kancha aamer chatni. A Bengali fish curry made serious. The river fish that holds its shape in a thick, spiced gravy — from a home kitchen in Kolkata, not a restaurant.
Not the egg-dipped bread version. The one where the custard soaks all the way in and the crust caramelises properly. Chef Senthil's recipe from the cloud kitchen on OMR — the one worth learning.
100% platform dependency means 100% exposure to policy changes, commission adjustments, and algorithm shifts. No direct customer relationship. This is the structural weakness that is difficult to resolve.
What this blog covers
Every post falls into one of these five areas. The writing comes from operator experience, not from reading about it.
Recipes
Real recipes. With the memory behind them, the technique that matters, and the ratio worth memorising.
Operator Reality
Cloud kitchen economics, menu engineering, vendor management, kitchen systems, P&L. The specific, not the general.
Food Science
Applied nutrition, ingredient function, nutrigenomics. What food does in the body, explained by someone who cooks it.
Building & Closing
Yellow Door, Seoul Sandwich, what the work taught. The decisions that most founder content skips over.
The Long Game
Personal systems, health as operations, the pattern-finding approach to building things. The philosophy behind the work.
Get it in your inbox
Recipes, food operations, and the science of what we eat. For the person building something, not the person reading about building something.
Also on:
Working on a food business?
I will tell you honestly whether there is something here that is useful to you.