Anil Bathwal

The Path

Indian kati rolls sit at the center of Anil Bathwal’s work at The Kati Roll Company in New York City, where a designer’s eye and a chef’s discipline are applied to a format that depends on repetition, speed, and control. The shape of that practice was built early: art school, advertising, then the kitchen, with each stage adding a different kind of precision to the same disciplined way of working. A visual background came first. Anil Bathwal trained at Lafayette College before beginning his career in Mumbai, where he worked as a graphic artist at Ogilvy & Mather in Mumbai until 2000. That move from college to commercial art established an eye for structure and composition, and in 2000 he stepped into a Creative Director role at one of the world’s biggest advertising agencies until 2002. The route from drawing board to creative leadership reads like a study in form and function, both of which remain relevant in his culinary work. Today, Anil is Executive Chef and Managing Director of The Kati Roll Company. The title covers two strands of the job: running the business and shaping the food with close attention to how it is made.

The Work Today

Recipe development, spice mixing, testing, and staff training define Bathwal’s day-to-day work. The process is hands-on and iterative, with each step depending on repetition and calibration. At The Kati Roll Company, the craft lives in the details—how ingredients are combined, how heat is managed, how spice is layered—because consistency is part of the product. That makes the work less about a single gesture than about holding a standard. Indian kati rolls remain the core, and the job is to keep them recognizable while making room for change inside the rhythm of a busy kitchen.

Signature

Indian kati rolls are the focus of Anil Bathwal’s work, and the format rewards exact handling. Within that compact structure, seasoning, wrapping, and balance become the main technical questions. It is a narrow field by design, and that constraint is part of the craft.

In Their Words “I took an art course because it has always been interesting to me, and then one course led to another. I changed my major and all turned out fine.”