Maine Vibes Magazine: I'd love to start with you introducing yourself stating your pronouns and introducing your business.

Cherie Scott: I'm Cherie Scott, my pronouns are she/her. I am the founder and owner of Mumbai to Maine, Maine’s first Indian-inspired culinary brand. 

MVM: I read about you on your website and through various outlets, but I really want to hear from you on what the catalyst was to start your blog, Mumbai to Maine, and how it evolved to your simmer sauces and led you to all your accomplishments thus far? 

CS: The driving force behind the blog was three things; one was that I was extremely passionate about food, and second I was going through a deep bout of nostalgia. It had been about 20-some years since I'd left Mumbai, I hadn't had my mother's food in a very long time. And three, I felt very isolated in Maine in my identity. This is one of the most embracing communities that I've ever lived in. I've never actually felt a community as strong as this one other than the one in Mumbai, but it wasn't about the lack of community that made me feel isolated, it was the lack of not seeing other people like me in Maine. 

I needed an outlet for myself where I felt like I belonged to. What I ended up doing was a funny story. I was talking about Indian food so much while I was going through this period of time, and my husband looked at me one day and said in a supportive way, I needed to, “stop talking about Indian food, and instead go write about it.” I was born in Mumbai, anchored there, moved, and now I’m rooted here, so it's the beginning and the continuum of my journey. It was a great, fun thing and it sounded really good, so like that the blog was born. 

Then what ended up happening was that I was tinkering in my kitchen with all of these family recipes and I had so much fun doing it. In a way, I was horrified because I really did not know how to cook anything of Indian food until my 30s. I could make a great pot roast, but I was embarrassed that I didn't know anything about Indian food. 

As I was writing these recipes down and working on them, I would blog and talk about my journey. If you read some of my earlier blog posts, you'll hear my voice developing and feeling like I was American, but also Indian. I didn't really know which way to tip the scales. Eventually I realized I don't need to tip the scales, I'm the best of both and I need to embrace that. 

Once I started creating this community online, I didn't realize how many people it was resonating with outside the state of Maine, who were also expats like me, having lived in the States for many years, and having these moments of oh my god, I really want my mother's dahl, or I want my mother's caldine or I want my mom's biryani or whatever classic dishes we grew up on in India. I started getting messages from all over the world, people saying, ‘We love your chorizo recipe and haven't had it for many years.” That's how I found that community that I felt I didn't have. All of a sudden, one day I got a random email from Stonewall Kitchen cooking school which said, “you come highly recommended by one of our other guest teachers here, we think that you'd be a great addition to our cooking school. Would you be interested in coming to teach an Indian cooking class?” I was speechless when I saw that email, if they really knew I couldn't teach anyone, anything more than a year and a half ago, but it was the best moment.

You know when things happen to you and in that moment, it's your defining moment? If you walk away from that, you regret it for the rest of your life, but if you lean into that fear of saying, “I know nothing, but I'm going to figure it out.” If you take that risk, there's a whole other world on the other side waiting for you. 

That was my portal if you want to talk about a catalyst; it was going from being a home cook to home-cook-guest-instructor, to entrepreneur to podcaster, to all these other things that came out of me saying yes to that one thing. I always encourage people to lean into everything that they feel like they know nothing about because what it'll do is two things; It will force you to learn, teach yourself or learn from somebody who's really good at what they do, and then it will use you as a portal to share only your story the way you can in the world and empower you. 

I launched a cooking series with Stonewall Kitchen that was always sold out because it was really focused and honed in on regional Indian cooking. I was taking India, this huge geographic area, and breaking it down into the sectional regions and educating people on how that food culture was informed, whether it was colonialism, or, say like in the north of Punjab, it’s dairy heavy because it’s very cold up there, there are a lot of wheat farms, so there’s a lot of rotis, chapatis, burratas, tandoori, ghee, and butter chicken. In the south you’ve got coconut trees, coconut milk, rice patties, and hot chilis, it’s very different. 

Once I started bringing all of this originality to life with these stories in class, they took off and would get sold out months ahead of time. The best part was, that I had a captive audience every time I held a class and I would experiment with the menu and make sure we did everything original. I’d look at the review sheets after class and think about how incredible it was that there was an audience that we have for this food here in Maine. We had the customers and the audience, now what? That’s where it all took off. 

MVM: I love your story and listening to you share. It’s interesting to hear how one’s background funnels into everything we do. For you, how does your Indian heritage influence the way that you move through the world today?

CS: I am a classic example of a first-generation immigrant, but I haven’t spent enough time here where I can call myself 100% American because there's so much Indian in me, I find it coming out in everything I do. For example, I can't make a chicken salad without making it a curry. It's not because I want to stand out, it's because it's who I am and I bring that same sort of perspective to everything that I do. When I launched my podcast in 2020 to celebrate Maine’s Bicentennial, I invited some of Maine's top formidable tastemakers at every stage in their journey as entrepreneurs and I'd sit across from them and listen to their stories and think, their stories really aren't very different from mine, it was a geographic difference when our journeys were occurring. 

To bring it back though, there was a time in my life, when I was 16, when I struggled with being Indian. When you're 16 years old and you come here, two things happen. You're trying to figure out who the heck you are, and on top of that I was an immigrant. I left the Mumbai airport and dropped into Vancouver, in a world where I didn't know what a homeroom was, I didn't know what a locker was, I didn't know any of that stuff, and had to show up on the first day of school and figure it out. That's why I figure things out and lean into things that are completely unchartered territory, and somehow survive and then thrive. It is my immigrant sensibility that makes me a success in those situations, where it's a sort of fight or flight kind of thing.

I'll never forget coming to Vancouver and saying, “I can't wait to get out of here,” when I had just gotten there. I was ashamed in many ways because I didn't feel comfortable or like I belonged there. My parents had just gone through this incredible journey of giving up both their careers, packing everything up and bringing their children as teenagers, and starting their lives all over again. There I was thinking, how the heck do I get out of here? I wanted to go to New York City and start on my own terms, and figure out for the first time in my life, who I was going to be when not around my parents, not eating Indian food three times a day plus tea time snacks, and do everything on my own. It was very liberating when I came to New York City. I got on a plane two days after my prom, and I didn't go back for years, but it helped me take the sort of identity crisis I had as an immigrant, as a Canadian, and then feeling like, “Okay, I'm busting out of this, and I'm going to figure out who I am for the rest of my life.”

It seems to be a pattern in my life, but I think when I finally walked away from being as Indian as I could, lost my accent, went to theater school, got my degree in broadcast journalism, moved to Maine, and had my kid… When she finally said to me while we were reading, “Mom, I figured out I'm half Indian” and I started telling her all these wonderful stories, what ended up happening was that I was falling in love with India again. She was realizing on her own that she was not who she thought she was. We were both figuring out who we both were every night while I was putting her to bed. Then one morning we were driving her to school and she said, “Yesterday was the happiest day of my life, I figured out I am half Indian.” I said yes you are, and shame on me for not telling you that! I never cooked Indian food at home. Her father's white, and to her, I was mom. I wasn’t Indian or American, but Mom. 

I think our children really have much to teach us. I think my daughter's revelation ended up saving my life and giving me the focus and the clarity that I needed as a grown adult, about figuring out who I was going to be for the rest of my life and who I was not going to be. I was done being the American that I thought I was. I realized I can be both and it's okay, I didn't have anything to prove to anyone, anymore. That was a big moment. That really stirred the pot for me to bring me where I am today. 

MVM: Thank you for sharing, that is a beautiful story and your daughter sounds amazing! I have a son and I cherish our nighttime conversations, where his mind wanders. I agree that we can learn so much from our children. I’m curious, what made you choose New York City?

CS: That's a great question. The day I landed in New York City, Mercedes, it was July 1,  it was 96 degrees and I got in a cab at JFK, showed up at my dorm, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan and got out and it smelled like hot pee. I felt like wow, I'm home because I finally felt like I was back in Mumbai. It was everything I thought it was going to be. It was noisy, dirty, crazy high energy, with amazing food, and people everywhere and I knew that’s what I wanted. So honestly, I think New York City chose me.

MVM: It’s a great place and that’s a beautiful revelation. You’ve done so many things already! Can you talk about your TV series, podcast, and blog, and what has been your favorite thing about each one? 

All three of them were so different. The TV series I did was a pilot for which we didn't end up getting as much funding, so it didn't go anywhere. While I filmed it though, it was absolutely exceptional. It was an amazing experience. I came up with the idea for that series while I was folding laundry, my son was just born, and he was taking a quick nap. I wrote the outline of all of it in my head as I was doing laundry. As soon as I was done, I sat down at the kitchen table, and I wrote it all out, all six series, and sent it to the cinematographer and producer. They wrote right back and wanted to do it. We haven't pursued the entire episodic because you need a ton of funding to be able to do that, but it's something that we're working on long-term.

The podcast came about because we have a professional studio here and I thought, I need to leverage the lemons that are in my garden and I have found my voice. There’s an incredible plethora of talent here in Maine in terms of tastemakers. I wanted to have really intense conversations with them and find out what their struggles and wins were and their journeys along the way into how they've launched their brands. In many ways, it was an express version of getting an MBA. Every time I heard a story, I was essentially taking mental notes and archiving what I should and shouldn't do and learning from their mistakes and lessons learned. 

I had produced almost 10 episodes before COVID hit. In conjunction with that, I was asked to host and produce a talking food and Maine series at the Lincoln Theater. The series was all women and innovation. We had Breanna Warner there from Atlantic City Farms, Amber Lemke from Maine Grains, Kate Bixby of Bixby Chocolates, and Susan Sherrill Axelrod of Culture Cheese.

At the very end I had Cal Hancock, the founder of Hancock Gourmet Lobster Company 20 years ago. I moved here 15 years ago and I remember hearing about her, and her winning all these awards,15 sofi Awards at the Fancy Food Show. I've been trailing her and watching her very carefully and how she grew the business. It was amazing to have her sit on that stage and tell the audience that she started a gourmet lobster company at the age of 50 years old. It’s inspiring on so many levels, because here we are in the middle of this pandemic, either resigning from our jobs, finding our new voices as entrepreneurs, or thinking “Oh, we're too old to do this at 40 or 45 or 50.” But know that, no, 45 is the average age for a successful entrepreneur, so 50 is your prime! 

She started the business at 50 years old with the most perishable product on the planet. She found a way to take it and put it online and create a product around it, not the lobster, but the actual product from it, that's brilliant to me. When I want to have a conversation like that with an entrepreneur that's not only done something so strategic in terms of how she built it, and then she was able to exit, walk away, and talk about it. That's hugely inspiring to me.

I know there are people like me out there who are thinking, “I've always walked away from my dreams, I'm not going to do that anymore, that's not acceptable, I only have this one life.” I came home today and I heard about this woman who started this company at 50, I'm going to do it. Maybe nothing now, but I think down the road, I know someone will randomly come up to me somewhere and say, “I was at that show, and I walked away and started my own chocolate company or whatever it may be, and I'm so glad I made a decision to come out at seven o'clock that night on a rainy night to do it.” When that happens, mission accomplished for me. I think there's a lot of value in storytelling, and I don’t know that we do nearly enough of that in Maine. Any opportunity you get to share your story is a very valuable thing.

MVM: You seem to connect with people on a deeper level, and enjoy learning people’s stories. Listening to you talk about your entrepreneurial journey and Mumbai to Maine, you’re inviting people to enjoy a piece of your heritage and your mother’s legacy. How does food create memories for people to cherish? 

CS: Food is a huge cultural connector. For me, it's purposeful. It's not about being passionate, it's about how can we make food purposeful. Hopefully, everyone finds their purpose, and my purpose was in food and storytelling. I find the intersection of both of them to be the most powerful place for me, it’s where I can bring my food and my storytelling to intersect and be able to create a new dialogue that answers the question; how can we talk about food? How can we leverage it economically to make some money from it? How can we educate about it? And how can we actually empower someone else with it? 

It’s about educating, empowering, and elevating, and not just women, it's about entrepreneurship. Through entrepreneurship, we’re able to solve so many problems socially. Focusing on food, you can create products that can help and elevate someone else's product. For example, Hancock Gourmet Lobster Company took my Makhani sauce and created a brand new product out of it, which is the first ever in the world. It's called the Lobster Makhani Dinner, and this year they won Best New Product at the Fancy Food Show. When I talk about how food can be purposeful, an economic driver, and empowerment and an elevation of someone else, true collaboration is where it's at. 

For their CEO to reach out to me and say, “Hey, we love what you're doing with your sauces, we think we can come up with a product that will elevate your brand, elevate your story, and help us innovate. That's what we want to do, we want to be number one in this industry with food, lobster, and in Maine.” It’s such a classic example of how food can be powerful and a driver of equity. They took the level of their brand and they raised my brand up and really collaborated within the state of Maine and now it's gone national because of one sofi Award.

In that same way, I want to take what I do to make a difference. I purchase these absolutely gorgeous handmade bags made by these Bangladeshi women because I know that it's really helping them be financially independent and break poverty for them. Giving them financial independence with this bag purchase, I put my logo on the bags and sell them with my sauces so that in using their bags, I'm able to create awareness for what they do, I'm able to put out a product that's 100%, recyclable and sustainable, and create inclusiveness and financial equity for them and it blends to my story and core values.

So how do my sauces create experiences for people? All I ask you to do is take a simmer sauce jar off the shelf and turn it around to read the story. I tell the story of the sauce, which needs to be told because my job is to not just get you to believe in my story, my job is to get you to believe in the story of where this sauce came from. The sauce is going to change your life and is going to rock your palate! 

If it’s Caldine, where does the sauce come from? How deep and rich is its history through colonialism? It goes back to the 1500s when the Portuguese came to India, they brought chili and brown potatoes with them, which we never had in India. I can't imagine an Indian meal without chili and potatoes. When I’m telling the story on the back of the jar, I’m not just talking about when it transformed my life as a girl, but how it’s going to transform your meals.

MVM: Food can transform and it has certainly done that for you!

CS: Until I put that product on the market, something changed in the world. This is why I talk about how food can be an economic driver. Food can change your life financially if you know how to write a story and put it in a jar. What is your story? Put it in a jar, put it in a sachet, put it in whatever it is you feel when a piece of cloth that you have woven, whatever you’ve made, it’s so powerful and it can change your life. I felt like until I put that product in a jar and brought it to market, I don't know if people took what I was doing seriously. Until I was officially an entrepreneur and people realized, “Oh, she's actually serious about this like she's already on the market!” I want people to see me in action and I want them to hear others in action and talk about what they’ve done because I think that’s inspiring.

MVM: Definitely, and I am so thankful you’re sharing with the magazine! I have a couple of questions submitted by readers. Casey asked, what are the challenges in pursuing a business and/or being an entrepreneur and a person of color? 

CS: It is 100% funding. There is no shortage of ideas, no shortage of energy, passion, the pursuit of excellence, grit, and determination, all of that is aplenty. What's lacking is the funding. Although, I don’t want to spend too much time talking about that… the truth is you need to be the change you want to see. I came to Maine, no one knew who I was so I made them know and care who I was. I created a podcast, a blog, and a sauce. 

I'm going to do all these things so that I create the voice and I make the difference. I'm the game changer in the state of Maine where people can no longer say, hey, no, but there's this Indian girl of Maine because we've heard all the stories, we've seen her on Bloomberg, so I know there are Indians in Maine. If I didn't do all of those things, nobody would know that we have people of color here. You have to be the change. 

Instead of waiting for funding, I banked on myself because I know if I bank on myself that I will come through. I went and got a full-time job and took every penny from that and invested it into my children and my business. I know if I invest in my business, I’m empowering myself, I’m not waiting on an investor to believe in me, and I’m not wasting time pitching to people who believe in me. I believe in myself.

I still make the sauces, I work full-time, and I am a mom; I do all of it because I know I will come through for my kids and my business. No one will care about my business as much as I do, and it’s a crazy amount of hard work. 

MVM: I always struggle with where to put my time and energy. It is a crazy amount of hard work but working for yourself is so rewarding. 

CS: I want to share this, I do this because I have the grace of God behind me, I have pillars of faith that literally hold me up. I had a crazy sensory flashback this morning. I remember when I was a little girl, we lived in a very tiny apartment, maybe 750 square feet. In the morning, at 5:00, I would wake up because there would be a stench in our tiny apartment. I would wake up because there would be this homeless woman drinking her tea next to me, having her pav bread. My mom would make the tea and give her the bread and never ask her to go sit outside and eat, this homeless woman was welcomed into our home and sat right on the floor. The one thing she knew was that when she showed up at my house at 5:00 in the morning, she would get her chai and her crusty bread because of the heart my mom had. 

I think back to my mother and what an amazing human she was, it was not pomp and circumstance, she did all of that for nothing. She did it because it was the right thing to do. That memory came to me this morning. When I say I pay homage to my mom with this business, those are the things that come to mind. 

We lived across from a church our whole lives and all she would have to do was tell one person that she was going to feed at three o'clock on a Sunday, and there'd be hundreds that would show up at the church, and she'd be panicking that she didn’t have enough food. She would put banana leaves down on the ground and people would sit in front of their banana leaf and we’d pour the food into the leaf and they’d eat it. There was no reward for this, my mother did this all because she cared.

My goal with my business is I have this gourmet brand, the ultimate goal with it is not to feed the upper echelon of those who can afford gourmet food, it’s to make sure that down the road, I’m able to feed those who would never be able to have a jar like that, who maybe don’t have a meal coming to them. To me, it’s not only about feeding those who have the economic power to enjoy it, it’s for those who don’t have a meal coming. The pinnacle of my success will be when I can feed those people.

MVM: Your mom sounds like she was a lovely person! Another question was from Winter. She asked, what is the easiest vegan Indian dish to incorporate into the home cooking cycle? 

CS: I think the easiest thing for her would be dahl. Dahl is a classic Indian lentil dish that has fed millions of people over the years. I always call it the life-giving dahl because it gives you life when you eat it. All you need to do is cook the lentils off in some hot water and let them boil and reduce down and then you add a tadka. A tadka is basically spices bloomed in ghee and you pour it right on top once the lentils are cooked and cover it immediately and the ghee (or coconut oil for the vegan dish) is now infused with the red chilies, cumin, black mustard seeds, masala, red chili powder, and turmeric and it seeps into every lentil and it steams up this wonderful aroma. When you take your first couple of bites, it heals you from the inside out. It’s so comforting. 

MVM: That sounds amazing. As you were talking, I was wishing you could be over my shoulder when I cook! Anything else you want readers to know about you or Mumbai to Maine? 

CS: I am working toward exhibiting at the Fancy Food Show next year. The reason I want to do it next year is that I am going to be launching a new line at the end of this year, but it'll go on to the national stage at the Fancy Food Show next year. I'm very excited about it! I've dreamt of winning a sofi Award ever since I can remember, it's the Oscars of food. To me, that would be a full circle moment to go from a  home cook that couldn't make dahl, to winning a sofi Award for innovation. Also, go online, and buy my sauces at MumbaitoMaine.com, I ship nationwide. Lastly, support our wonderful local specialty stores that support my brand and all of my work!

MVM: That's so exciting!! I can’t wait to see what you are coming out with! Thank you so much, Cherie. I'm so happy to meet you and talk with you. Thank you again for sharing your time and story. 

Thank you, Cherie, for taking the time to talk with Maine Vibes Magazine and sharing your incredible story with us!

Web: https://mumbaitomaine.com

Instagram: @mumbai2maine

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