Profile | Indian chef Surabhi Sehgal’s food art Instagram posts often go viral. Her goal? To inspire people to eat healthily by ‘applying imagination’
- Surabhi Sehgal’s food art Instagram account @supaintsonplates has 323,000 Instagram followers drawn to her beautifully presented dishes
- The self-taught, plant-forward chef traces her culinary journey, and talks about educating people through her creations and the reality of being an influencer
“Pretty as a picture” is what comes to mind as one scrolls through @supaintsonplates, an Instagram account set up by chef Surabhi Sehgal that focuses on food art and styling. It hit 323,000 followers recently, thanks to its captivating, artfully presented dishes – Indian, Italian, Middle Eastern and Greek.
Sehgal’s posts have a tendency to go viral; a video featuring the chef cooking an uttapam (savoury Indian pancake) with slivers of colourful vegetables arranged like flowers has, to date, garnered over 21 million views, 1 million likes and almost 5,000 comments.
“I like bringing out the hues of seasonal vegetables through my photos,” explains Sehgal, who says she enjoys showcasing food with simple techniques, like using microgreens or herbs to create a contrast between the colours of different ingredients.
“It’s an intuitive process that evolves as I go along, as I don’t follow a set template while styling.”
The self-taught Indian chef, currently based in the northern Indian city of Gurgaon, says her passion for cooking was ignited when she was barely nine.
