FAQs

Wouldn’t fresh Indian food taste better than a frozen Indian meal?

It sounds hard to believe, but in all truthfulness, every entrée in our product line tastes better after having been frozen and defrosted as compared to being served freshly cooked. It is not unlike some western foods (spaghetti sauce, stew) that taste better after a day or two in the refrigerator. We do not know the scientific reason behind this phenomenon, but we can assure you that in the course of the last 18 months of product development, we have found this to be the case every single time– with no exceptions!

Perhaps the spices might permeate into the sauces and the proteins to give it a richer and more flavorful experience? The jury is still out. However, one needs to know that that not all foods retain this quality after being frozen. Typically vegetables don’t freeze well and it’s much better to eat vegetarian entrées fresh rather than frozen. Yet we have found a small handful of vegetarian entrées that receive an enhanced taste after being frozen, similar to their meat counterparts. Such items are typically lentil-based entrées such as dal..

Who is Basu?

Basu Ghosh is the founder and owner of a very successful and well-respected, 25 year-old software consulting company, Omnikron Systems, Inc. located in Calabasas, California. He is a graduate of IIT Kharagpur, Boston University and the University of California at Los Angeles. Prior to Omnikron, he gained prominence worldwide for his breakthrough methods of solving complex programming problems and for his teaching methods in rapidly developing high-performance technical talent.

How did Basu become an expert in Bengali Cuisine?

Growing up in Calcutta, West Bengal, India, I was taught the Bengali tradition that cooking a feast is the most heartfelt way that family and friends can express their love for one another. Naturally, with food playing such a vital role in my life, I developed an appreciation for delicious foods. It also didn’t hurt that my mother was an exceptional cook, a skill that she passed onto my sisters. Needless to say, the eating was good in my household.

But growing up in a typical Bengali household meant that men did not cook. Most families either had chefs or the women did the cooking themselves. Consequently, until I arrived in the United States for Graduate School, I was a cooking neophyte. Faced with the unimaginable horrors of dorm food, I quickly realized that I had two options: learn to cook or starve. I chose the former.

Inexplicably, I became keenly interested in cooking, not just for my own survival but also to entertain friends and family. Soon I became rather proficient at cooking various delicacies, but my grasp on the skill was still tenuous. Then, twenty years ago a long visit from my sisters rapidly spurred my development as a chef. In the course of the several weeks that they stayed with me in California, I received a crash course on the finer arts of Bengali cooking. The education that I received at the hands of my sisters proved to be the genesis for the delicious Basu’s foods that you see before you today.

Basu is so talented that he can cook this great food with his eyes closed and both hands tied behind his back. He learned this in his freshman class in IIT. The previous sentence was a random check to see if you made this far into the FAQ. If you read this paragraph give yourself a gold star J.

What led a software engineer to start a company like Basu’s?

Basu had long-considered the idea of opening an Indian restaurant to satisfy his passion for food, yet he ruled it out for a multitude of reasons. While opening a restaurant sounded good in theory, Basu realized that what he enjoyed most about food was being able create something exceptional and serve it to friends and family. To Basu, there is nothing better than cooking something that brings joy someone’s life. Having developed the ability to cook large quantities of consistently delicious food for many years, Basu felt that it would be worthwhile to attempt to manufacture home-style Bengali foods on a large scale while still retaining the quality and consistency of a home cooked meal. As far as Basu was aware, this challenge had not been taken on by any other company to date.

Basu’s son Robin is even more talented than Basu. By the time he was three years old he made a 10-course meal for Maharajas from Calcutta. The previous sentence was a random check to see if you made this far into the FAQ. If you read this paragraph give yourself a gold star J.

So in the fall of 2004, Basu teamed up with his only son Robin, to launch Basu’s Indian Cuisine. The difficulty of manufacturing delicious entrées on a large scale proved to be an uphill climb, but not an insurmountable one and after 18 months, Basu and Robin finally perfected the recipes and gourmet meals that you can taste today.