FOOD TRENDS THAT RULE 2017
Consumer
demands will cater to everything from evolving tastes to selfie spots in
restaurants
IN THE middle of India’s
restaurant boom, what are the trends that emerge from consumer preferences?
Here’s my list of what I think works in the restaurant sector – and I’m willing
to bet that these trends will hold till the end of this year.
EXPERIENTIAL
EATING
In the old days, when
people went to a restaurant for a big night out, they wanted tablecloths,
formal service and even a violinist or a singer. The era of that kind of dining
is over. But don’t be fooled into thinking that people no longer go out for the
experience and only want to focus on the food.
They still want the
experience. Only, the nature of that experience has changed. Now, they want to
feel that they are at a funky place or one with a ‘happening’ vibe. That
doesn’t just account for the success of the Farzi Cafes all over the India, it
also explains the boom in such areas as Delhi’s revived Connaught Place, where
the food at most new restaurants is incidental to the experience.
At The Junkyard Cafe in
Delhi, the experience is so crucial to attracting customers that the owner has
even marked out ‘selfie spots’ or places where the lighting is perfect and the
background is suitably funky so guests can take selfies of themselves and post
them on social media. At Johnny Rockets outlets, guests may like the food, but
it is the ‘cheers’, the staff dances etc. that make the experience even more
memorable.
Five-star chains have
tried this with limited success. The Taj used to do this at its NCPA outlet in
Mumbai a decade ago but at Fifty Five East, at Mumbai’s Grand Hyatt, I was
startled to see virtually every second guest get up to dance with the serving
staff at a Sunday brunch (they were playing Gangnam Style!).
So, yes there is a
restaurant boom. But it is not necessarily about food. In a country where there
is little in the way of theatre, where there are few concerts and not that many
good clubs, restaurants become the default option for a night out. And while
bad food may drive guests away, good food won’t necessarily draw them in unless
the experience itself is fun.
UMAMI
As you probably know,
umami is the sixth basic taste that Western scientists have finally
acknowledged – after years of lobbying by the Japanese who discovered it. All
tastes are hard to put into words, but umami is contained in the taste of
chicken broth, of soya sauce, of shiitake mushroom, of Parmesan cheese and of
tomatoes.
Our food history suggests
that Indians have not bothered with umami flavours in our cuisine. The most
umami-filled Indian ingredient is the tomato and we only got that from European
colonialists.
But the history of Indian
restaurant cuisine in the 20th century is the story of an umami takeover.
Punjabi restaurant food in the post-Partition era is all about adding tomato to
dishes. A traditional black dal never had tomatoes. But all restaurant black
dal (invented by Moti Mahal and refined into dal bukhara) depends on tomatoes.
Butter chicken is all about a tomato gravy. Chicken tikka masala, as made in
British-Indian restaurants, can even use canned tomato soup as part of the
recipe.
The lust for umami
reached a new high with the creation of Sino-Ludhianvi or Indian-Chinese
cuisine in the ’70s and ’80s. This mixes Indian flavours (and masalas) with
heavy doses of soya sauce for an umami heft. At many places, they make the
thick red gravy that characterises this cuisine by mixing soya with tomato
ketchup for even more umami. Check out a roadside Chinese food stall. The
vendor will have two bottles of flavouring: soya sauce and ketchup.
Now even ‘Japanese’ food
in India has followed the Sino- Ludhianvi path. People order ‘sushi rolls’,
which consist of highly spiced and fully cooked (sometimes, even deep fried)
ingredients covered with rice and then soak the rolls in soya sauce.
And so it is with Italian
food in India. It’s the Parmesan (or cheap industrial substitute) and tomatoes
that make us love pizza. Tomato sauces are the preferred option for pasta; with
Parmesan sprinkled on top. Even Indian food has Ajinomoto (pure umami flavour)
added to it at many restaurants.
Go through any list of
the most-ordered dishes at any stand-alone restaurant in India and you will
find that umami is often the key to the popularity of those dishes. After the
cuisine of our ancestors ignored umami for centuries, we have more than made up
for that lapse in the last few decades.
CRISPINESS
When it comes to texture,
Indian food has a mixed record. There are parts of India (Gujarat and
Maharashtra, for instance) where we value the texture of a dish in the way that
they do in East Asia. But in much of the North, the focus is on stuff like
fragrance and aroma (hence the use of the horrible kewra in biryanis),
consistency (as in thickness of gravy) and flavour.
Even our pakoras are
rarely crisp. All too often they can be stodgy. Contrast this with Japanese
tempura (which may have its origins in our pakoras) where crispness and texture
are the point.
The Japanese don’t use
besan for their deepfrying batter: they use wheat. And increasingly, Indians
are giving up on besan in restaurant cuisine. Look at any menu. You will find
that a startlingly high proportion of dishes are first breadcrumbed and then
fried (often deep-fried). At most fast food chain branches in India (even
Burger King or McDonald’s) a so-called hamburger consists of a breaded chicken
fillet between two slices of flabby bun. Such chains as KFC are, of course, all
about breading and frying. Even at Indian Chinese restaurants where nearly
every bit of meat is first fried (or deep-fried) in cornflour before being
cooked, breadcrumbs seem to have suddenly taken over the menu.
Is it because we like
breadcrumbs? Possibly. But mostly I think it is because breadcrumbs give us the
crispy texture we crave.
BAKERIES
I get abused every time I
say this but I’ll say it again: rare is the Indian who knows how to make good
bread.
I’ve heard millions of
explanations: we don’t get the right flour, customers are used to bogus bread
(made using an industrial process without proper fermentation of dough) and so
on. Not one of these excuses is fully satisfactory.
But despite this failing,
it is boom time for bakeries. Some of them are fine, but most are staggeringly
mediocre. Two years ago, they all made so-so cupcakes. Now they make really bad
macaroons, (macarons, if you want to get pretentious about it).
Once again, I have no
idea why this should be so. Macaroons are now an industrial product: the likes
of Laduree make them in their thousands in factories. And once again, there are
the usual explanations: the quality of the almond flour is wrong, all chefs
don’t use a real Italian meringue etc.
But what’s important is
this: customers don’t seem to mind. So, expect the boom in bakeries to
continue, without any real improvement in quality.
CHOCOLATES
Expensive chocolates are
to rich people what mithai used to be, a decade or so ago. Now, it is considered
too unsophisticated to give mithai as a gift. So everyone looks for chocolate.
And because gifting budgets are large, it is the fancy foreign brands that have
the run of the market even though their stocks are often old and dated and the
prices are exorbitant. Chocolate has become a designer product, bought for the
label, not the quality.
Indians have rushed in to
fill this gap. There are some small artisanal chocolate makers (of the ones
I’ve tried, at least a third make reasonable chocolate), but the big boy on the
block is ITC’s Fabelle. I wrote about it when it launched but had no idea that
it would be such a success. (Nor did ITC, clearly, considering how quickly they
ran out of stock.)
This sector will grow.
And there will be more entrants.
AND THE
FUTURE
More of the same, I
think. The boom will continue. Indians will continue to be food-obsessed. And
we’ll still go to restaurants for fun experiences and eat spicy, crispy,
umami-packed food – sometimes while taking selfies!
HTBR1JAN17
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