Might it be that India’s contemporary restaurateurs unwittingly played a role in Australia’s victory over their own country in 2023 Cricket World Cup? On a recent trip to Bangalore, Chef Manu Chandra revealed to me that members of the Australian cricket team had dined at his latest restaurant Lupa while in the Karnataka capital, heartily tucking into dishes of high-quality meat and seafood. Perhaps these protein rich meals helped fuel their win over Pakistan, advancing them further in the series? Then, in Kolkata, over dinner at Sienna Cafe with Chef Auroni Mookerjee, I learnt a coterie of Australian cricketers had also dined here when in town for the semi-final, his staff happily adjusting dishes to suit their various ‘match-fit’ dietary regimes. Was this then a helping hand to their victory over the South Africans and a trajectory into the finals? Next time the Aussies are in India perhaps the country’s best chefs should turn them away from their tables.
Obviously the above is playful conjecture – notwithstanding the Australians’ commendable choices of eating places – employed to lead into this story about urban India’s transforming foodscape of which Sienna Café and Lupa—both ranked amongst the country’s top restaurants—represent two key trends in this: regionalism and globalisation.
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Inside food comes out
India was in the early stages of transitioning from socialist frugality to frenetic capitalism when I first stepped onto her soil in 1995. Discovering that Indians did not eat a homogenised cuisine of ‘curry’, but rather an unmatched diversity of regional cuisines rooted in varied geography, history and cultures, unexpectedly set me off on close to thirty years of learning about India’s food. Early on, I often encountered strong ambivalence amongst Indians about their country’s multiplicity of cuisines, demonstrated in their telling me negative stereotypes about the eating of communities other than their own. This astounded me: how could they fail to see the wonder of their collective food heritage? Over time, I realised this was exactly the issue, they could not ‘see’ what I term as ‘regional’ food, which in practice is the domestic food of a particular place, as it was hidden away in homes, indeed it operated as ‘inside’ food with little availability in the marketplace. Without entrée into households in different parts of the country, opportunities to experience these ‘other’ cuisines were limited. Now, interest in regional food is booming amongst Indians. What changed this? India’s top restaurants
The answer involves increased prosperity and mobility, women coming out of the home, technology and, according to many Indian food folk, MasterChef Australia. Sienna Café is an exemplar of this trend.
Located in Hindustan Park para, Sienna’s menu is a varying happenstance of dishes created from the ‘treasure trove’ of seasonal produce available at neighbourhood markets. Global influences are incorporated but serve to elevate the distinctiveness of local ingredients, flavour and techniques; Mookerjee describes this as “Bengal forward bajaar”. An aromatic Bengali lime cocktail and a plate of dainty bok ful (heron flower) fritters with shorshe (mustard) dip opened my meal here, followed by a large freshwater shrimp tempered with spicy Goan chorizo oil. India’s top restaurants
The concept of ‘zero-waste’ is embedded in the Bengali domestic kitchen, and at Sienna. A bowl of kangee, rice porridge, paired with crisply fried vegetable peels, was an artful demonstration of ‘root to fruit’ with plant foods. Then there was ‘nose-to-tail’. If Mukerjee had asked if I fancied a dish of fish offal I would have politely declined. Fortunately, he didn’t, leaving me to unwittingly tuck into a sublime preparation of fish liver, fat and flesh. Sienna, and Mookerjee, have been the subject of many accolades —“the future of Bengali food”— yet the place is unassuming, approachable and surprisingly affordable. I think Sienna has the potential to be a Noma or Ebulli, and put Bengal on the global food radar.
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The globalising Indian palate
Bengaluru-based Manu Chandra is a stalwart of contemporary Indian dining, having been involved in many innovative eateries over the past few decades. Lupa is his latest venture. Located on Mahatma Gandhi Road, the gated entrance transitions guests from hectic street to the calm of a Tuscan style courtyard complete with twinkling fountain, or the considered opulence of the New York influenced dining space.
The menu mirrors this internationalism focusing on European and Mediterranean dishes: however, the incorporation of local and regional produce brings India to play in the food. A friend and I whiled away an evening in the courtyard here over an unhurried meal of hot brie made with Chandra’s own Bengaluru-made cheese and banana leaf wrapped whole kid shoulder. 2000 bottles of wine from around the world, signature cocktails and a gelato bar serving seasonally varied house-made gelato all attest to the globalisation of Indian food tastes. If you are in Bengaluru, it is definitely worth scheduling in a meal here and enjoying urban Indian cosmopolitanism. India’s top restaurants
Read more: The Taste of India: A culinary tribute to the land we love
