Raghavan Ramachandran Iyer was an Indian-born American chef and author best known for bringing Indian food to the world through writing cookbooks, teaching thousands of cooks, consulting for restaurants, leading tours, catering meals and creating frozen dinners. Iyer moved to the United States in 1982 to study hospitality at Southwest Minnesota State University, before transferring to Michigan State University. He found work as a French teacher after graduating and eventually became a chef and c... moreRaghavan Ramachandran Iyer was an Indian-born American chef and author best known for bringing Indian food to the world through writing cookbooks, teaching thousands of cooks, consulting for restaurants, leading tours, catering meals and creating frozen dinners. Iyer moved to the United States in 1982 to study hospitality at Southwest Minnesota State University, before transferring to Michigan State University. He found work as a French teacher after graduating and eventually became a chef and cookbook writer. His first book, published in 2001, was Betty Crocker's Indian Home Cooking, an introduction to Indian food aimed at Americans with limited previous experience with it. The book was a success and was well received. Iyer went on to write several more cook books, consulted for restaurants around the country, taught countless workshops, led tours to India, created a line of frozen Indian meals for Target and instructed thousands of professional cooks at universities, museums and companies, including Google. In 2016, he won a James Beard Foundation Award for his video series Indian Curries: The Basics and Beyond. By some estimations he is credited for teaching more Americans how to cook Indian food than anyone else.
