Around Town: Inside Santosham, and how a Thane woman in her 60s turned her mother’s recipes into a restaurant

Bhagyalakshmi Gohokar, a 71-year-old woman from Thane, has transformed her mother's traditional South Indian recipes into a thriving restaurant business. In 2022, she co-founded Santosham, a South Indian restaurant chain, alongside her son Chittaranjan Gohokar, 45. Santosham began with quick-service outlets in Manpada, Thane, and later opened dine-in restaurants in Powai and Marine Drive.

The restaurant is renowned for its banana-leaf meals, which offer unlimited servings of 21 dishes for Rs 499, as well as a larger sadya featuring over 30 dishes during weekends.

Bhagyalakshmi's culinary journey began in 1958 when her father, Shanti Bhavan's founder, moved to Nagpur and started a restaurant serving home-style South Indian food to bachelors from Kerala. As the youngest of six siblings and her father's favorite, Bhagyalakshmi often accompanied her father in the kitchen, where she witnessed traditional cooking methods, such as dosa making over wood and coal fires.

Her mother, Parvathy, a hearing-impaired woman who had studied only up to the fourth standard, was the key influence on Bhagyalakshmi's culinary skills. Parvathy taught her how to cut vegetables uniformly and grate coconut evenly, with recipes passed down through generations, some of which are over a hundred years old.

After Bhagyalakshmi's husband passed away in 1997, she took over the family factory in Satara, running it until financial troubles forced its closure. In 2014-15, the family relocated to Mumbai, and Bhagyalakshmi began Bhagyalakshmi's Kitchen from her home, catering to her housing complex through a WhatsApp group. She initially cooked meat dishes by smell alone and later developed a passion for the Kerala sadya, which she struggled to find in Mumbai.

When the pandemic hit and her son's other ventures failed, Bhagyalakshmi and her son reinvigorated the family's culinary legacy, opening Santosham's quick-service outlet in Manpada, Thane. Today, Santosham boasts an 8,000 sq ft kitchen and has expanded to include two more quick-service outlets, a dine-in space in Powai, and a restaurant at Marine Drive, all dedicated to preserving and sharing the rich culinary heritage of South India.