Life, like chocolate, is bitter sweet. What matters is what makes you happy: Sanjana Pate of La Folie on #foodocracyforher

Radio Finely Chopped by Kalyan Karmakar

Her home town of Mumbai was like a new city for her when chef Sanjana Patel moved back to India from France and opened a patisserie here. This was 9 years back when the city had just begun to wake up to modern patisserie trends. She opened La Folie in Fort from where she did largely chocolate based confectionery. It was with her outlet in Bandra, La Folie Lab, that she began introducing the city to the wonders of complex French pastries and then the world of sourdough breads before the small outlet became a very popular ingredient focussed cafe. Within a short time, both Sanjana and La Folie became the talk of the town. This is when she was struck by a series of health challenges. She had to take a 8 month break during which she and her husband and business partner, Parthesh Patel, went to South America on a cacao trail (she was on crutches due to a fracture). That's when she 'rediscovered' her passion for chocolate. Then came the Covid pandemic which put a halt on La Folie's growth path. This provided an excellent opportunity for Sanjana to do a lot of soul searching on what she wanted from life, before she took La Folie on a new direction, with her husband fully backing her. 'I am happy now,' says Sanjana, to know why and what she did to reach there, you have to listen to the interview. The award winning #podcast #FoodocracyForHer by Kalyan Karmakar is India's longest running podcast featuring women entrepreneurs in the food and beverage business. Please share the episode. Please click on like as it helps the video be discovered and please do subscribe to the channel to catch future episodes of the podcast.