Not just North Indian: The future of Indian food lies in Pan Indian restaurants

North Indian and Mughlai—just jog your memory back even a decade, and this description comes to mind when you think ‘Indian food’ and ‘restaurants’, with North Indian largely alluding to Punjabi cuisine. Thanks to their harmonious intermingling centuries ago, to most of us North Indian and Mughlai are one cuisine and we comfortably refer to them interchangeably. Therefore, even today, if one searches ‘Indian food’ for any location on Google, our beloved Zomato, following our habitual reference, throws up options of the Best North Indian restaurants.

Salivating at thought of spicy butter chicken, tandoori roti, koftas and kebabs? But isn’t there something odd about one region’s cuisine representing ‘Indian food’, given that our country boasts as much culinary diversity as it does linguistic? Is this is a British legacy, terming the popular cuisine of the North ‘the cuisine of India’? Perhaps. Was the world first introduced to Indian food through restaurants of North Indian NRIs? Partially true. But there’s more, says Chef Harpal Singh Sokhi: “Various factors played a role—the restaurant culture caught on in Delhi before the rest of India as North Indians like everything grand and love to celebrate. Also, back then, most restaurateurs were North Indians, glad to showcase their cuisine and adapt it to local influences wherever they travelled. South Indians also opened chains, but while we marketed our restaurants as ‘Indian’, they marketed theirs as ‘South Indian’”. Interesting, no?  And heartening too—that the community that sends the largest number of soldiers to the border, also put its national identity before the regional when it comes to labelling its cuisine.

The age of regional relishes

That said, regional and community cuisines finally getting their pride of place, previously shadowed by our awe of international ones – especially American, Italian and Mexican – is just as welcome. This has not only opened us up to less-explored cuisines of India, but also allowed us to relish the intricacies of mainstream ones. Now we don’t look at Maharashtrian food from a single palate lens, but know that Kolhapuri food is different from Konkani, which is different from Puneri. As Nishek Jain, owner of 29 States puts it, “You can divide each of our states into many culinary states’’. In fact, with his book Anna He Apoornabrahma, Shahu Patole has added one more dimension to the food debate—the food of the untouchables, the dalits. And for all this exposure, we have to thank home chefs and those instrumental in pushing the trend of pop-ups.

Kalyan Karmakar, who blogs at finelychopped.net, points us to a precursor, “Somewhere the food blogging wave that started here around 2006—inspired by Indian expats in the UK—played a role. We weren’t thinking ‘regional’, but our writings became that, as they centred around home food and recipes. This led to the next phase three years ago, where pop-ups boomed to give foodies what restaurants were not. Many who conducted them, like Geetika Saikia, were bloggers”.

The unifying factor

As we know, it didn’t stop there—regional restaurants mushroomed as stand alones and in established hotels and then we got Bombay Canteen. As its partner Sameer Seth says, it was conceptualised to “celebrate India through its space, food and even drinks, which we serve as chota, bada and Patiala, the kind of thing we grew up with. But we also wanted to make it relevant and contextual to people today. So while some dishes are authentic recreations of traditional recipes, others are our versions inspired by state cusinies.’’ In its one-and-half years, The Bombay Canteen has served cuisines from 16 states.

Still heady with the recent opening of Neel Indian Kitchen + Bar, Chef Jayadeep Mukherjee aka ‘JD’ insists, “People have always been receptive to community eateries. The demand was there; restaurants didn’t take it up as they’ve been playing it safe.’’ But Karmakar, Jain and Seth unanimously disagree that such concepts would have been received with the same enthusiasm 10 years ago. “Today, people are far more curious about  food because of exposure—through food shows, increase in travelling and social media’’, says Seth.

In fact, having litti chokha on a trip to Bihar is what inspired Nishenk Jain to start a vegetarian diner that would serve cuisine of 29 Indian states. Jain explains, “People are tired of eating the same old thing repackaged as new; they have come to appreciate that the neglected North Eastern states have a lot to offer in the culinary space; and the novelty of Italian, Mexican, Lebanese has worn off since one can look up recipes online and make them at home’’.

While it is a joy to see a Bengali mochar chop next to an Uttaranchali buransh on the same menu, those like Karmarkar rightly ask, "What is the need to have all Indian cuisines on one menu? I prefer going to places that do one cuisine well’’. In order to do justice to each cuisine, while serving all, the solution that's found favour with all these restaurateurs is using authentic ingredients and changing menus frequently. While at Neel Indian Kitchen + Bar it will mean a to-be-introduced ‘Day’s special menu’, 29 States serves elaborate cuisine-specific menus for four weeks, in addition to the regular menu. And at The Bombay Canteen, it’s simply about changing the menu every season. “Litti chokha should be cooked under earth (mixed with cow dung), but 29 States is near a hospital, so I can’t do it,” Jain candidly shares. “For such reasons, I manage to stay 60-65 per cent true to the roots.’’ That said, these restaurateurs, who believe the pan-Indian wave is here to stay, are just as keen as Kalyan Karmakar to see restaurants specialising in a single region’s cuisine.

The debate of specialised-versus-multi-cuisine spaces can go on, but it’s almost a historic time for Indian food. We are finally acknowledging and celebrating our food diversity, and  broadening the definition of Indian food to be inclusive. In this regard, pan-Indian cuisine restaurants remind us that while our myriad cuisines are beautiful individually, they are still part of a whole. And the influence of one regional cuisine over another is proof that there’s an organic unity in our diversity.