Aman Hirani

Aman Hirani started cooking before he understood why it mattered. As a kid in Mumbai, he'd slip into his grandmother's kitchen every time he visited, watching first, then helping, then taking over small pieces of the process himself — years of it, until his first chef's knife finally showed up and the first thing he made with it was a lettuce wrap. Lettuce wraps became fried rice, then soufflés, then whole menus. When a school principal asked him at thirteen what he wanted to become, the answer came without hesitation: chef, multiple restaurants, three Michelin stars. The specifics have narrowed since then. The ambition hasn't.

At sixteen, he was in a real kitchen — THEORY, a modern European restaurant in Mumbai, apprenticing under Chef Clyde Comello. From there, he went on to an internship at Indigo, India's first fine-dining restaurant, and eventually eight months at The Bombay Canteen, one of India's most acclaimed modern restaurants — working butchery, garde manger, pastry, plancha, and tandoor across seventy-to-eighty-hour weeks while still finishing high school. He spent a year of school breaks working directly under Chef Thomas Zacharias, the restaurant's head chef, keeping a diary of everything he was taught.

Then came 2020. When the pandemic closed restaurants across Mumbai, Aman started Savour It, a home-kitchen operation cooking and delivering à la carte meals across the city — menu, sourcing, prep, packaging, delivery, all of it run solo. It was his first time building something of his own rather than working someone else's line, and it planted the idea that would eventually become BYOND.

In 2021, he moved to New York to attend the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a degree in Food Business Management. The externships kept coming: at Junoon, the Michelin-starred modern Indian restaurant in Manhattan, under Chef Akshay Bhardwaj, where he was fast-tracked from the appetizer station to tandoor and expo within his first month. At the CIA's own Bocuse Restaurant, he worked his way from front-of-house to lead bartender, running the full bar solo on 100-cover nights and getting his own cocktail specials onto the menu. His class unanimously elected him General Manager of Apotheca, their senior capstone event, where they planned and executed a 130-guest charity dinner sourced from donations secured from more than a hundred partner companies — raising money for the Hudson Valley Food Bank in what became one of the most financially successful events in the school's history.

After graduating, Aman spent two and a half years on the line at Four Seasons — first at the Michelin-recognized Lido in Miami Beach, working stations across Garde Manger, Crudo, Pizza & Pasta, and the full Hot Line, then moving to the grill station at the Michelin-recognized signature restaurant at Four Seasons Fort Lauderdale.

In April 2026, he founded BYOND LIFESTYLE GROUP, LLC, the parent company behind BYOND Hospitality and its sister brand, BYOND FiTNESS. BYOND Hospitality was built on a simple premise: that the level of food and service usually reserved for a Michelin dining room shouldn't require leaving the house to get it. Every private dinner, cocktail event, and cooking class Aman runs across South Florida draws on the same training that shaped him — CIA technique, Four Seasons discipline, and a decade of kitchens that gave him no shortcuts.

Ask Aman what kind of leader he wants to be, and he won't say "the one people listen to." He'll say the one people would choose to follow anyway — approachable, exacting, standing at the front of the line rather than behind it. That's the standard behind every menu BYOND Hospitality puts on your table.