Sumayya Usmani is a food writer and educator who grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Sumayya moved to London in 2006, where she lived for ten years before she made Glasgow home. She followed her father’s second career as a lawyer and practised the profession in both Pakistan and London. She eventually quit her twelve year legal career to follow her passion for sharing and writing about the flavours of her homeland, with a view to highlighting Pakistani cuisine as a distinct one. The author of two award-winning and award-nominated cookbooks: Summers Under The Tamarind Tree (Frances Lincoln 2016) and Mountain Berries and Dessert Spice (Frances Lincoln 2017), her writing reminisces about food and memories growing up in Pakistan. Sumayya advocates cooking by "andaza" (sensory and estimation cooking), which is how she learnt to cook from her mother and grandmothers, from a very young age.
Sumayya has worked with some of the biggest names in the food world, including Madhur Jaffrey, Sophie Grigson, Claudia Roden, Rachel Allen and Vivek Singh. She writes for and appears in many publications such as Delicious, Olive, BBC Good Food (naming her the go-to expert in Pakistani food), Saveur, Guardian, Sunday Herald, New York Times, Telegraph and Food 52. Sumayya has been on the Good Food Channel (with Madhur Jaffrey), BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Saturday Live, as well as BBC Radio 2, BBC Asian Network and BBC Worldwide. She is also a panelist on BBC Radio 4's Kitchen Cabinet panel with Jay Rayner. Sumayya has appeared at some of the world's top literary festivals including Cheltenham Literary Festival, Borders Book Festival, Aye, Write, Edinburgh Book Festival, Ballymaloe Litfest, River Cottage, Lahore Literary Festival and she does demos at Borough Market on occasion.
Sumayya is an experienced food educator and has taught Pakistani cookery all over the UK; however, she now focuses on teaching the community how to cook simple food from scratch, at her own social enterprise cook school in Glasgow, called Kaleyard. Sumayya is now focusing on building a narrative writing career and her food memoir, Andaza, is published by Murdoch Books.