Former master sommelier Alpana Singh isn’t afraid to pivot

Fall may be settling in with crisp air and golden leaves, but The Bear kept the heat alive with a season full of cameos as bold and bracing as a glass of chilled wine. Among them, Alpana Singh, a restaurateur and former master sommelier, stood out in episode two, playing herself and sharing notes of wine wisdom with the character Sweeps, an aspiring sommelier.

“I really like acting quite a bit. I have a SAG card. I prepared for my role on The Bear. Even though I was playing myself, I was still mindful of the energy on screen. I’m going to play a character even though it is me,” she shares.

This commitment to her work has shaped Singh’s remarkable career. In 2003, when she was 26, she became the youngest woman and the youngest South Asian to earn the master sommelier title. Singh woke up thinking about wine and went to bed thinking about wine. This is echoed in the 2012 documentary Somm, which follows a group of sommeliers, all men, pursuing this arduous endeavor.

Singh was exposed to the sommelier world at 18 when she applied for a local restaurant job where she grew up in Monterey, California, initially with the intention of earning money for college. Her family’s grocery store had had a financial fallout, leading to an “immigrant work ethic where you show up, you do your job, and you just put your head down and go to work.” The restaurant’s hiring manager told her she needed to know more about wine.

She then bought a couple books, memorized them, and went back. She was hired. Singh discovered when working that she liked learning about wine, and saw how she could help enhance the dining experience. “The level of delusion that I had to have had at 18 years old to think, ‘Alright, instead of college I’m going to go take this test with a three percent pass rate. That sounds fine,’” she says. “I’m not old enough to drink. Nobody else looks like me, but I didn’t even know that part because there was no Internet back then. It was just ignorance, blissful, wonderful ignorance.”

Singh’s career only expanded from there: a decade hosting Check, Please!, a book, critically acclaimed restaurants, and more work in television. Her recent eponymous restaurant opened in 2022—named after herself when her first choice was copyrighted. “The TV thing I did is because I really enjoy it. I will say this, it is extremely dangerous to view yourself through the lens of other people who see you on TV,” she says. “It’s such a distortion…You created the art, I release the art in the world, and I left it at that. It’s not who I am, it’s something I do.”

“It was a shock to the system when I learned that the title did not meet up to what it actually was. By walking away from the identity, it helped me to step into a new one. I don’t want one big achievement to be what I am known for.” 

In 2020, Singh resigned her master sommelier title as part of a wave of reckoning in the wine industry when 21 women came forward saying they had been sexually harassed, manipulated, or assaulted by male members of the Court of Master Sommeliers. She doesn’t frame that decision as an ending so much as an evolution into becoming more than someone who loved wine. “It was a shock to the system when I learned that the title did not meet up to what it actually was,” she says. “By walking away from the identity, it helped me to step into a new one. I don’t want one big achievement to be what I am known for.” 

Much like her onscreen persona in The Bear, Singh finds joy in mentorship. She calls it “compound interest” that builds on years of daily effort. “Every day you show up, you put a penny in the bank. Mentorship is the interest that magnifies those pennies,” she explains. “The coolest thing I get to do is help other people because I get to live through it again when I help them. I’m reminded of my resilience.”

Her resilience and drive also pulled her away from home. Her parents are still in Monterey, but Chicago is where Singh feels fully herself. “Every time I go back home, it feels less and less like home because I’m not me there. I’m the daughter, the sister, the granddaughter,” she says. “In Monterey, it’s the ghost of my prior conditioning of being a dutiful Indian daughter. With my path, I didn’t take a traditional path. I was married, but I didn’t marry a South Asian person. I got divorced and I didn’t have kids. I’ve just kind of done things very differently.”

It is a duality that many children of immigrants know well. “When you go home, you shapeshift into your family persona,” Singh says. “When you’re in your American life, you edit what your family means so it’s not misinterpreted as oppression. I’ve spent the last 10 years in therapy trying to integrate the two parts.”

She handles the contradiction with humor. “My cousin and I were talking, and I said, ‘You ever notice when the aunties are talking about a girl who’s not traditional, they describe her as “very modern?”’” Singh grins. “That’s not a compliment. It’s the Indian version of ‘bless her heart.’ And if she’s really rebellious, they call her an outlaw.”

Approaching 50, Singh is ready to let go of judgments. “There is no right or wrong way to do 50. Some people are divorced. Some people have never gotten married. Some have kids who are going to college. Some have been married for 30 years. Everybody is on their own path,” she says. Singh remembers her 20s, watching peers pair off while she focused on her career. She also reflects on how the advent of social media threatens her focus. “If I take the master sommelier exam today with my attention span I have now, I would not pass,” she admits.

Singh doesn’t display her accolades around her home. No framed certificates, no photos of awards. Instead, her walls hold pictures of her dog and loved ones. “I’m proud of the achievements—it’s just not all that I am,” she says. “Take the achievement away, do you still like me? That’s the question.”

Still, she retains her appetite for a good story. Whether she’s mentoring sommeliers, laughing about Punjabi weddings, or starring on prestige TV, Singh is always curious about what happens next. “I view people as vignettes. I want to check in on them and see what the plot twists are,” she says.

As for what is next for Singh, she has it in her vision to be the oldest person to win things. “I would love to win a James Beard award,” she says. She was nominated back in 2001, and in the years since, she successfully brought the awards to Chicago. For someone who has never stopped pivoting, we could very well see this as a vignette in her story.