FOOD SPECIAL ................Make in India Gets Hotter

Make in India Gets Hotter   It is the renaissance of Indian cuisines as chefs and restaurateurs research street, cook with international techniques and package these in quirky new concepts Chef Rajdeep Kapoor at the Sheraton New Delhi has nihari and butter chicken coming out of his ears. On a sultry afternoon, he confesses to wanting to escape to Greece for a bit -for the salubriousness of clime. And flavours less daunting. It's a feeling many of us can relate to. There are times when it all gets too much; when however much you love that nihari and paya or vino and crostini, you seek an escape -give the palate a break. For almost a month, the food and bev erage (F&B) team at the hotel has been in volved in detailed research. To put out “the best“ from Delhi on the menu at the newly revamped coffee shop, the Delhi Pavilion, it has been visiting the nooks and crannies of the city -medieval and modern -picking up food from single dish vendors, dissecting flavours, and rec reating own versions. “I can't tell you how much we have eaten... how many times we have visited Old Delhi, Ashok Nagar, Lajpat Nagar, Malviya Nagar... how many types of butter chicken we've eaten, nihari, kebab, blackened meat curry from famous shops...“ Kapoor trails off. The result: An intelligent menu that breaks up “Delhi food“ into several historical periods -from medieval and Colonial to contemporary, and that serves up some very local, “non-hotel-like“ flavours. The best haleem in the city is perhaps at the Delhi Pavilion, also the best fish fry (with a Bengali touch, courtesy visits to CR Park). But the most astonishing fact is that the menu moves away from being standard “coffee shop“. It is more in keeping with what specialised, regional restaurants may offer. At Nukkadwala, a quick service restaurant (QSR) outlet currently incubating at the Vatika Business Centre in Gurgaon, it is Chicken Ishtew Pattice from the new menu at The Bombay Canteen with the same sense of surprise that you scan the menu. Instead of the QSR clichés --masala dosa, chola bhatura, papdi chaat -you get a nuanced menu. There is alur dum, whose recipe was found at a specific vendor in Kolkata; Gujarati panki prepared by layering thin paste of besan between banana leaves and steaming -which even households don't cook any longer. The benne dosa is plump and comes with coconut chutney and aloo rasa. “We travelled for almost two years to hand-pick dishes that people connect with and to create them as authentically as the street shops which still evoke nostalgia,“ says Nitika Kapur, head of product development and innovation. The inspiration was the over 5 million street vendors in the country, she adds. The venture by real estate and hospitality major Vatika group will see 25 outlets come up in the NCR in the next six months and over 100 across the metros in the next one year at an investment of `75-`100 crore. Being a QSR chain, the challenge was, of course, to make the cooking systems-based. Each recipe was broken down into simple processes, and kits created so that the meals can be pre-cooked but finished at the outlet level. If it is able to execute this as planned, Nukkadwala has the potential to not just change the way we look at QSRs in the country but facilitate a rediscovery of authenticated regional Indian food for even the “non-foodie“ masses. Club Class and Indian Food Indian cuisine(s) in exciting new formats have been the hottest selling propositions in the country for the last two years now.The success of restaurants such as SodaBottleOpenerwalla, Monkey Bar, Farzi Café, The Bombay Canteen and more has shown how younger audiences have been more than ready to embrace the idea of food-with-nostalgia repackaged slickly. The new-age inventive desi-chic menus are aspirational and attract an audience that wants some familiarity of flavours but with a twist to make it “cool“ experiential dining. That even coffee shops and QSR chains want to be part of this market points to the fact that a new renaissance of Indian food is what we are perhaps living through.There seems to be now a democratisation of the “authentication“ culture. Far from being “lost“, traditional Indian dishes are being put on the map. So if the Kutchi dabeli is a little more sour, minus the sweet chutney of Mumbai immigrant-cooking, that is exactly how Nukkadwala is determined to dish it out -in Gurgaon too. Similarly, at Marut Sikka's new restaurant the Delhi Club House (DCH), you see very high levels of detailing and authentication. To recreate some of the best-loved club classics from across the country, Sikka not only called in old cooks to demonstrate their way of cooking a dish, but is flying down ingredients from smaller towns to get the taste bang on. Ghee for the softest idlis you can possibly get in a restaurant in India, for instance, is from Madurai, chilli sauce accompanying the momos is from Kolkata, to remind us of the exact taste of “Cal-Chinese“, while the shami kebab, inspired by the Secunderabad Club, come stuffed with mint and onions, exactly like their Hyderabadi versions. “The idea is to have easy comfort food but the best possible version of that,“ says Sikka.“There is a lot of nostalgia for club food though many younger people have never even eaten this kind of food,“ he points out. Housed in a mall (the Sangam Courtyard in Delhi), priced super competitively -at around `300 per dish -the audience for DCH is undoubtedly Gen Y, which may not have been to the fraying Raj-era clubs but will nevertheless walk in for perceived nostalgia as well as the “newness“ of the experience. Enter the “Indian“ Bar If a reworking of nostalgia is one way to go, at the other end of the spectrum are chefs playing with cutting-edge international techniques. Farzi Café, when it launched last year, did that with its smashed up, nitrogen-infused bhel and so on. Now, chef Sujan Sarkar is using classic French and Japanese techniques to cook quintessentially Indian flavours. Ek Bar, restaurateur AD Singh's venture in partnership with Sarkar, is the hottest new opening in the space this month. Pegged as the only “Indian cocktail bar“, Ek Bar is quirky both in the way it looks and in its food and drink. An installation of moonghpali cones, kitschy memorabilia, artisanal cocktails, including those dispensed out of tea cups (the punch, which has both Indian and tea plantation origins comes as such) and food created with modern techniques but known Indian flavours come together here. There's charred besani roti instead of lavash, prawn sausage is done in-house as are murraba dips, and one of the most interesting bar snacks is the Raj-era scotch eggs with a chorizo coating. It is a contemporary language the food speaks despite its Indianness. “For years, when we ran Olive, I thought I didn't really know Indian food well enough, so I would not open an Indian restaurant. But then things began to change a few years ago.And now, we are increasingly seeing a market where you can't go wrong with Indian food in India,“ says AD Singh. Singh had started Soul Fry in Mumbai almost two decades ago, perhaps ahead of its time, though the restaurant still exists. It offers coastal food in a global café setting, a formula that seems to have clicked with such success only more recently. With Monkey Bar (in partnership with chef Manu Chandra and Chetan Rampal) and SodaBottleOpenerwalla, Olive Bar and Restaurants, the parent company, for years perceived as offering “international“ dining to metro diners, is now firmly on the “In dian“ route to restaurateuring success. “When people are in a bar environ, they tend to experiment more with their food choices as well“, says Singh. It is an interesting insight and one of the reasons perhaps that the company seems focussed on the bar experience even while offering quality food.That most of this creativity should be in Indian formats is telling of the market dynamics. Indian Abroad; NRI at Home At Monkey Bar in the Mumbai suburb of Bandra, which was launched earlier this year, almost half of the menu is now desi, inspired by regional dishes. India's first gastro pub was always meant for the self-confident Indian diner, at ease with hisher unique sensibilities. But over time, equally because of market receptivity and Manu Chandra's own journey as chef, with a veering towards creating brilliant bold flavours from the local, the slow and the regional, the brand is now synonymous with a solid regional Indian repertoire pre sented in an easy, casual format. It is thus nat ural that a separate vertical focussing solely on Indian food be now in the making. The idea is to take both Monkey Bar as well as Ek Bar forward. Not only will the brands exist side by side in India (Partner AD Singh does not see them as cannabalising each oth er; the market for Indian is di verse and huge, he feels). But they are to also go internation al, to cities like London and Dubai. It is an obvious route to take. Indian food has never been bigger abroad. The cheap curry has had an image makeover. Gaggan's, after all, got voted the 10th best restau rant in the world. And if chefs like Floyd Cardoz (The Bom bay Canteen) and Atul Koch har (set to open NRI -Not Re ally Indian, in Mumbai in Octo ber) think this a viable time to come back home, the reverse is also true. “The market for Indian cuisine internation ally has grown many fold in the last 10 years. Countries like Brazil, Germany and Denmark that have no connection with Indian migra tion or food have embraced Indian cuisine re ally well. I believe this trend is to grow strong er,“ says chef Kochhar. Kochhar's NRI is to be yet another interest ing twist to the Indian story. In one of the freshest ideas so far, the menu will feature di aspora food. “With every migration there were some classic recipes that went out with people. In their new habitat they created reci pes with local ingredients that became part of their new heritage... dishes like Roti Canai, Pepper Crab, Jonny's Roti, West Indies Goat Curry. It is Indian food but still so different,“ points out Kochhar. Conversely, Indian Accent in New York is set to take “real“ Indian food to Manhattan. Chef Manish Mehrotra, whose talent at creat ing exquisite new dishes from bold, authentic regional flavours is phenomenal has been shuttling between Delhi and New York. We will watch how that restaurant pans out. But one thing is sure: it will be a far cry from those initial tentative days at the Manor in Delhi.

Anoothi Vishal

ETM 27SEP15