Hi there!
I’m Bhava.
Have you eaten yet?
Would you like a cup of homemade chai?
Growing up, my mother cooked for four kids, helped with my father’s business and was a total badass. Her version of a “lazy dinner” was yeast donuts from scratch.
We were all big on dessert, which we enjoyed every night. After years wearing many hats in the professional food world, I opened Sweet Alchemy in the old, beautiful converted dairy barn at Lang Farm in Essex Junction. Here, you’ll find me baking fresh pastries, pouring espresso drinks and brewing our locally famous homemade chai from what was once the bullpen. From our giant picture windows you can sit with your coffee and see the seasons changing. You’ll likely see my father tinkering in the cafe, or my twin brother coming in to wash dishes in exchange for cinnamon rolls -- my mother is on speed dial for recipe questions, and my husband, Kunja, works back of house with me. We’re a family business at our roots. Kunja and I met as children in South India. For 20 years we came in and out of each others lives as I would visit India when I could for a few months at a time. We had never considered one another as anything other than good friends, but in a story far too magical to condense to these paragraphs, we found ourselves suddenly and very happily engaged in January of 2020.We have been joyfully doing life and business together since and Sweet Alchemy, although my treasured creation, is only now complete with him in it.
Kunja and I run our small and mighty operation believing that the care, love and consciousness you put in your cooking is paramount. It's such a privilege to cook for you, and we put that into everything we make. Together we make a sweet and savory menu full of unique tastes, regional Indian-inspired flavors, homemade baked goods and satisfying espresso drinks. We can’t wait to welcome you to our sweet corner of the world!
How it all began…
I was six years old when I made my first cake. I will never forget the cloying overly sweet taste of that yellow brick like first result or the exhilaration of dumping things into a bowl and putting them into the oven to see what would happen. My mother, in all her wisdom, instead of chastising me for wasting the ingredients asked me what I could do differently next time. I said, “ less sugar and less vanilla!” and so an accidental alchemist was born.
Cooking and baking have always been the arenas in which I have felt most at home and most able to be of service.
As I moved around the world, floated in and out of college and other jobs I always came back to these as my anchors of joy. A series of serendipitous events led me to starting my own home based baking business in February 2014 and after 3 1/2 years of producing a truly inconceivable amount of treats from a small home range I decided I needed more space.
My father and I looked at a place in Essex (which coincidentally was where he went to high school and knew the Lang Farm well) that my realtor had idly suggested I visit. I was admittedly not at all thrilled with the idea of being in Essex as it was a town I knew nothing about and it seemed very far away from Burlington.I had no intention of ever doing a retail venture but something changed immediately once I was inside those walls. The moment I walked into the barn I knew I had crashed right into my destiny and I had no idea how I was going to do it, only that I had to. I dove in, with no experience, no money but a deep well spring of determination that was driving me. My father was slated for a full knee replacement a few months after I signed the lease and he set to work as a retired contractor to build out the walls and do as much as he physically could to make my dreams come true. I will never forget the sacrifice he made and the pain he went through to create this space for me and all that it has meant. Running a business isn’t for the faint of heart but I have been uncommonly lucky in my support system and can’t even count how many times my family (from 2 hours away!) have come to my aid to keep this place alive and well. We took what was the raw space at the end of a beautiful old dairy barn and turned it into something quite special for what we hope is many years to come.
