|
13 VERY HOT ’N’ HAPPENING FOOD FADS
Will
Czech beer bubble over and will Asian cuisine go ultra-snobbish in 2013?
And will high-end eateries be replaced by parking lot pop-ups? Here’s what
to expect while eating out — and in — in India
1 THE COMING OF PAELLA
Who would have thought 2012 would be so much a “French year” in the
metros, notably Delhi and Mumbai? The cuisine has always bowed before
Italian, India’s thirdmost popular cuisine after Mughlai/ Punjabi and
Chinese/Chinjabi. But a spate of cafes, restaurants and bakeries have made
French food chic and accessible. Spanish and Spanish-inspired cuisines will
also take centrestage. It is hard to see why the tapas-over-sangria, ending
in soul-satisfying paella routine has never caught on in India. Some
high-end experiments might change that.
2 CZECH BEERS
Predicting drink trends can be
perilous. Year 2012 was supposed to be the gin year or even moonshine year
(people brewing their own at home) globally. Instead, German beers along
with fresh beer on tap became the rage. But suckers for German lager must
get the beer facts right. It’s the Czech Republic that has the highest per
capita beer consumption. The first-ever beer was brewed in Brno and some of
the choicest beer is Czech: Budweiser Budvar, Kozel, Pilsner, Bernard and
Staropramen. Thanks to Prague capturing popular imagination (including
scenes in Rockstar) and better marketing, Czech beers are beginning to find
their place under the Indian sun.
3 THE KITCHEN STARS
RISE
Imagine George Calombaris, the affable and hugely popular Aussie chef,
getting mobbed in Chandni Chowk. It was one of the highlights of 2012.
India has woken up to the phenomenon of star chefs. Being a chef today is
not just respectable, it is also sexy and cool. And we can see the effects
in our restaurants too. Chefs are increasingly thinking out of the box,
engaging with their customers and cultivating the right table-side manners.
Expect to see a radical growth in their tribe.
4 CHEFS AS ENTREPRENEURS
Eating out is solid business.
The divide between creative hands and minds in the kitchen and the
businessmen running the front-end is diminishing. Savvy young chefs are
proving that they can be as good at whipping up sauces as they are with
numbers. Delhi has always had its Ritu Dalmia, Mumbai its Rahul Akerkar and
Bangalore its Abhijit Saha. But 2012 saw Olive Mumbai and Bangalore’s
executive chef Manu Chandra joining their ranks with not just one but two
whacky new concepts. In Delhi, chef Julia Carmen Desa set an example with
Tres. Watch out for more.
5 QUIRKY CONCEPTS, CREATIVE MENUS
In the age of Twitter and Quickr, what can hold your attention?
Certainly not stodgy old restaurants. This is the age of ideas, of
converting them into creative businesses. From India’s first gastro pub in
Bangalore to e-enabled bars where a swipe card on the table gets you beer,
everything is exciting and uncharted. Expect more cutting-edge concepts in
our kitchen. Meanwhile, the fascination with cafes will continue — and not
just those selling coffee and offering free wi-fi. Instead, gastro-cafes,
as I call them, with interesting, quirky menus, that run as personalised
spaces will continue to flourish.
6 TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED DINING
Instagram-enhanced menus are now doing the rounds in London and New
York. In India, we have just seen the appearance of starters-mains-puds on
snazzy iPad. But with new restaurants seeking to cater to iGen, menus on
iPads are set to get more common. Save paper and say goodbye to dog-eared,
haldi-smeared cards.
7 UNDERGROUND CULTURE
The maturity of a food market
should not be judged from the number of high-end restaurants, but the
prospects of the “underground” and mass culture of food. Chicago, Toronto
and New York are famous for their food trucks that serve almost gourmet
meals to the office-going, lunch-time crowd at ultra-reasonable prices.
Thousands, if not millions, follow the journey of their favourite trucks on
the social media. In London, Melbourne and Hong Kong, it is the pop-ups
that are a barometer of an alive and kicking food culture — springing up in
milk booths, parking lots and secret locations. India is just getting
acquainted with Michelin-style dining. But at the other end of the
spectrum, Delhi and Bangalore seem to be spawning alternative,
on-the-fringes activity. Facebook groups, clubs previewing restaurants and
indeed secret pop-ups announced only to “friends” and “friends of friends”
serve to take food and food culture beyond conventional restaurants. More
are certain jumps on to the bandwagon.
8 HOME BAKERS
Thanks to the power of television and food-as-lifestyle shows, it is not
just mummyjis and auntyjis who are cooking. Every cool teen, tween, twenty-
and thirty-something is trying his/her hand at cakes, bakes and more. From
cupcakes to sinfully delicious (or full-of-health multigrain) brownies,
kitchen creativity — and showmanship — is peaking. Not all do it to show
off on Facebok. They open mini businesses, retailing some of the most
innovative, delicious and quirky desserts that you can find in town. Bigger
businesses and restaurants will start sourcing their “home-made” desserts
from them.
Breads, bagels, biscuits and cakes in any case have
got pretty sophisticated of late. Swiss
pastry, Dutch stroopwafels, French bread… all are
being made in Delhi or Mumbai now.
9 HEALTHY BINGEING
One of the most sensible 2013 global trends portended is the fading of
diets and growth of eating after exercise. As if we need a nod from
forecasters to binge. But perhaps we do. I can’t vouch for middle and
affluent Indians burning more calories than they consume. But anything with
a “health” tag will sell like, well, hot cakes. From oat cakes to yoghurt
brownies, prunes to almonds, blueberries to olive oil, “super foods” are flooding
a market that is increasingly conscious about lifestyle diseases that
accompany affluence.
10 HIGH-PROFILE VEG
Some of the highest spenders in
India are vegetarian. It follows therefore that both restaurateurs and
chefs are focusing like never before on making vegetarian food seem
luxurious and suitably nibble-worthy. Parmesan tokri chaat, asparagus
taka-tak, silken tofu grills, chestnut dosas — vegetarian need not be
boring.
11 GIMME RED
As the world hunts in vain for
the next cupcake, we’ve found ours — the Red Velvet Cake! 2012 saw an
all-round obsession with this gorgeous red — cocoa and beetroot (that’s the
secret ingredient responsible for the colour, the story goes, and all truly
legit recipes need to have that) mingling together to give us a very chic
sugar high. The fad is all set to spread across board this year too.
12 THE SNOB ASIAN
We may have got over our love for cabbage-infested Punjabi-Chinese, but
pan-Asian flavours are in no hurry to go away. From Japanese (soft shell
crab maki and cooked sushi) to Korean, from dim sum to son-inlaw eggs,
Asian dining gets more sophisticated even as casual restaurant and cafes
serving it up thrive.
13 ME-TOO FOOD CRITIC!
Social media jai ho. We all have
a voice, and an opinion on last night's dinner. And we’ll make sure to post
it on FB, on pain of death. We all eat and now we tweet too. We are all
critics!
: : A n o ot h i V i s h a l : The writer is a Delhi-based food writer & curates
food festivals , ETM121230
|
No comments:
Post a Comment