Back to the Roots

Its a sentiment that seems to waft through Indias metros,where young men and women,tired of the gustatory excesses of foreign food,are digging into their culinary heritage,taking pride in their mangodi pulao and their plantain podimas,and seeking out restaurants that evoke a taste of home. Indian food is making a big comeback, says Gautam Anand,vice-president,pre-opening services,ITC,entrusted with the role of visualising restaurant concepts for upcoming hotels of the chain. The luxury hotel chains research and development team has done exemplary work in documenting and preserving local recipes from across India. Chef Manjit Gill,corporate chef at ITC,says he still remembers how the winning recipe for the hotels famed Dum Pukht biryani,was arrived at in 1983. We collected recipes from Delhi and Lucknow,and learned from the Awadhi style of cooking. After four years of research and trials in the kitchen,the Dum Pukht biryani was born, he says. The menu at one of ITCs newest restaurants,the all-vegetarian Royal Vega at the ITC Grand Chola in Chennai,featuring rare delicacies like a pulao made with berries native to Kashmir,was born over four years in much the same way.

Perceptions of Indian food as not being cool are changing,says Pooja Kamath,27,a popular restaurant reviewer on Zomato,Bangalore. With the collapse of the joint family and its copious kitchen,diners now look to restaurants for heart-warming dishes,she says. Nostalgia is only half the story. At Esplanade,a Bengali restaurant in Bangalore,chef Subhankar Dhar says his customer base has witnessed a slow but certain shift in the past five years. The ratio of Bengali-to-non-Bengali diners has gone from 80:20 when we launched to 60:40 today, he says. There is interest among people who eat out a lot and want to discover cuisines.

Ritu DSouza,a food writer from Mumbai,says there is a definite movement towards going back to our roots. Mumbai has always had food from across India,especially in the suburbs,but now some of these restaurants are opening up in south Mumbai and Bandra. Food walks are generating awareness about Goan,Sindhi and Bengali food. I recently chanced upon rare pounded spice mixes from the Koli community at a shop in Dadar,and the owners told me that they had started to stock them after several requests, she says. We live in interesting times. Local food festivals in Mumbai,like the Koli food festival held every January at Versova and the Konkan-Marathi jatras,have a cult following,which is growing every year.

Several new cookbooks highlighting hitherto-little-known ethnic food,such as food from Karwar,and Sindhi recipes from across the border,are feeding this trend. Aais Recipes by Usha Gupte and Swati Gupte Bhise documents 70-plus recipes of the Chandraseniya Kayastha Prabhu community of Maharashtra; Popular Prakashan is publishing a book on Konkanastha Brahmin cuisine; last year,a book on the Franco-Indian cuisine of Pondicherry by Lourdes Tiruvanziam Louis,The Pondicherry Kitchen,showcased recipes like the mimosa muttai,a chilled,egg-based hors doeuvre named after mimosa blossoms.

Saranya Hegde,a 70-year-old Mangalorean who wrote a book on Bunt cuisine,began to document the recipes of her community way back in 1978. I saw that some recipes were getting rarer to come by. People from our own community were no longer making many of the post-pregnancy dishes that have been with us for decades, says Hegde,who is flooded with requests for copies of her out-of-print book.

Despite authors and bloggers rooting to save Indias vast gastronomical heritage,recipes and methods continue to die out,says Michael Swamy,a Cordon Bleu chef from Mumbai. Swamy has embarked on an ambitious project with celebrity chef Vikas Khanna to document recipes,some dating back thousands of years,from across the country. The team has collected 500 recipes and hopes to bring many more between the covers of a book tentatively named The Epic.

Chefs must travel and learn from home cooks to bring new interest in their menus,says Naren Thimmaiah,executive chef at The Taj Gateway Hotel in central Bangalore,home to Karavalli,much awarded for its authentic coastal food. We replicate age-old recipes. We dont try fusion. Thats reserved for the coffee shop kitchen, says the chef from Coorg. Last year,he was in Ramassery,near Palakkad,Kerala,to unravel the secret of the Ramassery idlia special,larger idli that is cooked in mud pots and that keeps fresh for three days. He flew in a housewife from one of the four families in Ramassery that continue to make and sell this 200-year-old snack,and she set up a live idli counter at Karavalli for a few days the dish,a roaring success,was eventually subsumed into the restaurant menu.

With discerning diners demanding fresh ethnic experiences,chefs at diverse standalone dining rooms,too,are going back to old ways and recipes. Chicken with bones is showing up on tables; seasonal produce is in vogue. If establishments like Kanua on the outskirts of Bangalore,with its rustic Konkani kitchen and beautiful traditional seafood curries,appeal to classic sensibilities,spunkier joints,like Potbelly rooftop cafe,a Bihari restaurant in Shahpur Jat in Delhi,draw first-timers with inventive menus. Owned by Puja Sahu and Vivita Relan,Potbellys menu has colloquially named items like chicken/mutton ishtew,aloo McLalu chop,phish phingers,and dehati fish and chips,besides traditional Bihari fare like litti chokha and poshta dana machhli steamed fish in poppy seed paste. Since its opening two years ago,Potbelly has become one of the hippest eateries in the city. According to Sahu,the head chef is Bihari and the entire menu is based on her mothers recipes.

Another popular regional eatery in Delhi is Dzukou,which serves authentic Naga cuisine,with emphasis on pork. A number of dishes are smoked,whether as curries or in marinations like anishi or smoked yam leaves,a common Naga preparation. These are served in shallow teak bowls with sticky,glutinous rice. Given that Nagaland is home to the Raja Mirchi,the worlds hottest chili,most dishes are highly spiced. Karen,the owner,says,About 80 per cent of our clients are non-Naga diners who want to explore this palate. Other notable regional restaurants in the area include Yeti,a Himalayan restaurant which serves Sikkimese,Nepalese and Bhutanese food.

Commercial success doesnt always come easy for such ventures. Anurag Talwar,a 32-year-old businessman and sushi enthusiast from Gurgaon,who eats out at least four times a week,says he goes to regional restaurants and food festivals only if assured of playful food. Restaurant food cannot be only about hanging on to an era. It should have an element of surprise. Ill go to a Bengali restaurant the day it serves me a raw fish dish,or at least,makes a curry look fabulous, he says. In Mumbai,Jiggs Kalra is readying to launch his latest brand of restaurants,Masala Library,that just might woo the likes of Talwar well-travelled young Indians accustomed to best ingredients and ever-new presentation. Kalras son Zoravar,who heads the project,says,We are still serving Indian food the way we did 30 years ago. We need to change that and make it contemporary. Masala Library will use molecular gastronomy and foreign ingredients to enhance Indian flavours. In pav bhaji,for instance,the green peas will be replaced by balls of pea essence,creating an unexpected burst of flavour. The restaurant,located in the Bandra-Kurla complex,will open in September.

Anjan Chatterjee of Oh! Calcutta and Sweet Bengal says it wasnt always easy going for regional chefs. The regional food market,he says,was like Bollywood,where dialogues and songs are so often in Punjabi that people from other parts of India as well as the world have made that language and culture synonymous with India. When Chatterjee opened Mumbais first Bengali restaurant in 1990,he was storming the bastion of tandoori chicken,dal makhni and naans. An instant success,Oh! Calcutta set a trend for the industry that has since seen several mid-to-high-end regional restaurants.

Mishali Sanghanis is a similar story. Unhappy with the oily fare passed off as Indian cuisine,the co-owner of Pali Village Cafe,Mumbai,was keen to launch a restaurant that would offer authentic home-style food. Pali Bhavan,located in the hip Pali Naka neighbourhood of Bandra,opened last year,with sepia-toned interiors and select dishes from Maharashtrian,Hyderabadi and Punjabi cuisines. Our clientele comprises working professionals who value dishes that are made well and may be vanishing from the Indian dinner table, Sanghani says. The menu features refreshing preparations like tandoori shakarkand sweet potatoes crusted with pepper,herbs and chilly flakes and baked in a clay oven,bhareli vaangi a Maharashtrian-style stuffed baby eggplant roasted in a clay oven and tossed in a tangy peanut gravy and kaddhu khatta meetha red pumpkin cooked with raw mango and chillies.

Sunnys,a popular Euro-Italian fine dining restaurant in Bangalore,recently opened a smaller place,serving Sindhi and Mudaliar food. The menu,just like the customers,is a curious mix: fiery coconut-laden red curries from south India and delicate dishes like daag mein gosht and Sindhi kadhi,all recipes from owners Arjun Sajnani and Vivek Ubhayakars family kitchens.

It isnt enough to popularise and glamorise ethnic food in Indias cities,says Savita Uday,who runs a cultural NGO,Buda Folklore,in Honnavar,north Karnataka. Uday uses tribals and locals as resource persons to engage with Bangaloreans about native ingredients and recipes. Between her and her mother,a cultural activist and author,they have revived over 300 buttermilk-based native drinks,and dozens of healthy steamed sweets from the region. It is when you take note of native food that the natives themselves see value in it, she says.

Ramanan agrees. When I went to my village near Kumbakonam,I serendipitously learned about a sort of layered sweet with a jaggery-mango filling that our ancestors used to make for journeys. No one makes it anymore,but I thank god the recipe is still around, she says. Chennai isnt Kumbakonam,but when Ramanan breaks through the layers of this pastry from the past,she knows she is digging into her culinary history,and shaping her daughters future.