Voices Anand Neelakantan Debashis Chatterjee Ravi Shankar S Vaidhyasubramaniam Anu Aggarwal Swami Sukhabodhananda MAGAZINE Buffet People Wellness Books Food Art & Culture Entertainment NEW DELHI july 27 2025 SUNDAY PAGES 12 © Shyamali Patel (From extreme left) Black rice farra, mud crab grillo; Pine skewers “Climate changes drastically here, from Kashmir to Himachal Pradesh to Uttarakhand. It plays an important role in defining what we put on the plate.” Prateek Sadhu, Naar The Anteaters The Indian hyperlocal food trend is allowing chefs to rediscover cuisine By prachi Joshi M idway through your meal at Mumbai’s Masque restaurant, a plate of black rice pasta makes an appearance—a reimagined version of farra from Chhattisgarh. But you’re not prepared for what comes alongside it: a small bowl of toasted red ants! Head chef Varun Totlani suggests you sprinkle a spoonful on the pasta for a toasty crunch and mildly lemony zing. “Some people are happy to try them instantly while , others might come around to it after some deliberation. There have been guests who have hesitantly tried the ants and then asked for a second helping. That’s my favourite part of the experience—introducing guests to new flavours and helping palates evolve, one ingredient at a time,” he says. There’s a reason Masque is consistently listed among India’s best restaurants. Every dish celebrates a regional Indian cuisine, an interesting ingredient, or a forgotten technique—sometimes all three. Even at Papa’s in Mumbai, where a seat at Chef Hussain Shahzad’s table gets snagged in mere seconds, red ants make an appearance in a dish called Bugs Bunny It’s a shawarma of . sorts with rabbit meat grilled over coal and glazed with red weaver ant tare to give it a tangy twist. “The recipe takes inspiration from the traditional red ant chutney known as kai chutney, a staple in certain tribal cuisines of Odisha and Chhattisgarh,” says Shahzad. The ants are sourced from Jharkhand, where they are commonly found feeding on sweet potato leaves. They are carefully ground and blended with a medley of aromatics and vinegar, to balance their natural acidity, resulting in a complex glaze that elevates the dish. It’s not just about the ants. Across India, chefs are digging deep, literally and figuratively, into the soil, forests, and forgotten corners of their native landscapes to spotlight hyperlocal ingredients and regional wisdom. Deep in the pine forest of Himachal Pradesh, Chef Prateek Sadhu is serving pine skewers with smoked bottle gourd at Naar, while at Sienna Cafe & Store in Kolkata, Chef Koyel Roy Nandy is shattering caste stigmas by putting innards like brain and liver in bar bites, and at Chennai’s Kappa Chakka Kandhari, Chef Regi Mathew is spotlighting humble ingredients like tapioca and jackfruit. bold and the bountiful Given India’s vast size and mind-boggling diversity the term “Indian food” , was never adequate to encompass everything that was on offer. Yet, for the longest time, the culinary scene was limited to “North Indian” or “South Indian” restaurants or that catch-all, neither-here-nor-there multi-cuisine restaurant. Regional diversity rarely made it to the plate. However, over the past few years, there has been a noticeable shift towards regional Indian cuisines. “We have so much culinary wealth, but people are not aware of the food because they have not seen it. Chefs are now seeing the potential of regional Indian cuisines and recreating them in a restaurant scenario,” says Mathew. As the co-founder and culinary director of Kappa Chakka Kandhari, he highlights the breadth of Kerala cuisine, particularly through the lens of its emblematic produce, i.e., kappa (tapioca), chakka (jackfruit), and kandhari (bird’s eye chilli). “Most Kerala houses have a kitchen garden where they grow these vegetables in their backyard. So, there’s a nostalgic value attached to it,” he says. A star dish on Bugs Bunny his menu is kappa vevichathu with kudampuliyitta meen “Most chefs today are trying to curry a tangy home, style fish curry made reimagine the ingredients of traditional dishes in a very differ- with kudampuli or Malabar tamarind that ent way.” Hussain Shahzad, Papa’s is prepared in an earthen pot and served with tapioca mash in coconut masala. Even North Indian restaurants are looking beyond the butter chicken trope; for example, Ikk Panjab in Delhi serves culinary treasures from undivided Punjab. So you have dishes from the other side of the border such as dohra kebab (mutton seekh encasing chicken seekh), Rawalpindi chooza (succulent whole baby chicken cooked in a clay oven), Ferozepuri crispy macchi, and more. The recently opened Loya at the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai also offers a delicious journey through northern India with dishes that you usually don’t find on fine-dining menus, such as bhanjeer murg (chicken cooked with hemp seeds), Kangra khodiya gosht (pahadi-style mutton curry with hand-ground, charred walnut ink), and dal jakhiya. At Sienna Store & Cafe in Kolkata, co-head chef Koyel Roy Nandy steers clear of the well-trodden kosha mangsho-aloo poshto-cholar dal route; instead the focus is on bringing to light the diversity of Bengal by presenting stories from both the east and west of the region while reflecting the seasonality of the baajaars or local markets. So, you have dishes such as a refreshing baajaar ceviche with tangy kaacha aam broth and tabak maaz mete aloo or yam mash served with a drizzle of mustard oil—all quintessentially Bengali flavours but presented in unexpected ways. Across in Mumbai. Here, husband-wife chef duo Viraf Patel and Prakriti Lama Patel present dishes featuring mountain ingredients such as nettle, churpi cheese, timur (Himalayan peppercorn similar to Sichuan pepper), jimbu (aromatic herb from the onion family), and Himalayan trout—the last a star ingredient, increasingly seen on upscale menus around the country . Culinary chronicler and consultant Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, who herself champions Uttarakhand cuisine and food from the mountains, couldn’t be happier: “The only way you’re going to keep this food alive is by consuming it. I think it’s a great thing that we’ve got so many chefs talking about different regional cuisines and putting them on the plate. Even if it’s just a few people doing it right now and even if it’s a bit chaotic, everything is still driving conversation and awareness.” “I get to introduce ingredients like fig leaves or water hyacinth to consumers. It is a form of cultural preservation.” GITIKA SAIKIA, Northeast food curator North by northeast Cuisine from the northeast of India is also slowly coming into the limelight, particularly Assamese and Naga Turn to page 2 Mountain magic When it comes to highlighting regional Indian cuisine, perhaps the most focus can be seen on two contiguous but very distinct locales—the Himalayan belt and the northeastern states. At his 16-seater restaurant Naar, chef-owner Sadhu wants to tell the stories of different Himalayan cultures. “Climate changes drastically here, from Kashmir to Himachal Pradesh to Uttarakhand. It plays an important role in defining what we put on the plate,” he says. One of the dishes that defines mountain cuisine according to him is sundarkala or kukla. This comforting breakfast dish from northern Uttarakhand consists of hand-pulled noodles served with meat and vegetables and tempered with wild onion and garlic greens. “This dish came into India from Tibet via trade, and we made it our own; there are even folk songs about this dish! We never talk about it because it's a noodle dish and is not considered ‘Indian’. But these stories need to be told because they are not just dishes, they are a part of our food culture,” says Sadhu. Another restaurant spotlighting food from the Himalayan belt is © Gitika SaikiA Fiddlehead fern with pork