Pune on my plate: Aragma exploring ‘art of hero-ing everyday ingredients’ with its tasting menu

For every dish, a host at the studio explains the story behind the dish. (Express photo by Arul Horizon)

Aragma, which has 24 covers, offers only tasting menus and functions on reservations, setting itself apart from how the industry typically functions in India, namely a la carte dining with a mass appeal. Comprising several courses of small-portion dishes, the tasting or degustation menu is concept-driven and gives chefs the creative freedom to be artists, plates to be canvases, and guests, connoisseurs.

One of the world’s best tasting menus resides at Noma. Brainchild of chef René Redzepi, the Copenhagen-based restaurant earning 3 Michelin stars, created a cult following worldwide. When the restaurant announced its closure, Nomaheads, as their fans are fondly called, were beyond devastated. The restaurant has postponed D-Day to 2025. In India, tasting menus have been tried and tested for more than a decade in cities, such as Delhi, Mumbai. In April 2024, chef Manish Mehrotra launched a new tasting menu at Indian Accent in Mumbai.

Poornima Somayaji, owner of Aragma, went for it because she wanted to give people an experience with storytelling connected to memories around food. If the website gives only a hint of the food, the menu card acts as a teaser.

The present summer menu, soon to make way for a monsoon one, says that the first course is “lentils, celery” to be followed by “mackerel, almonds” and “mutton, fresh turmeric”, rounded up with “lychee, basil” and “mahua passion fruit”. The decor, likewise, featuring elements like linen curtains both reveal and conceal the scene beyond.

What the chef sends out to begin is a welcome drink that has apple and something else, a spice, unfamiliar. “This is radhuni, a spice familiar to eastern Indian cuisine but not here in Maharashtra. I travelled India for about a year and went to different places to see what people are doing with food. I love to understand how a particular place has transitioned culturally, going from what we were to where we are. When I came across radhuni, I knew I had to use it,” says Somayaji.

The unique taste of the drink shows the chef Amit Ghorpade’s vision, balance. All subsequent dishes, from the lentil soup with celery, to the smoked bangda, with lemon juice, pickled onion and caviar, served with almond and arugula sauce, have limited ingredients and clean flavours. “Our point is to showcase common ingredients in a very different way,” says Somayaji.

The presentation tells a story in itself, along with the staff who help illuminate the story of every dish and ingredient.

There was the time Somayaji, a wildlife enthusiast, travelled to a tribal village in Vidarbha and came across indigenous families who revered the Mahua tree. Somayaji brought back several sacks of dried Mahua flowers. The sweet memory of the visit transpired into a dessert, a biscuit, topped with a mahua and caramel, forming a bridge over passion fruit and banana bread layers.

The dinner meal stretches to two-and-a-half hours. The food at Aragma, ultimately, offers the comfort of familiar ingredients, as the produce is sourced from the local market everyday, but with the surprise of fine cuisine.