Last week, I checked out a rather unusual hangout in Gurgaon and came back more impressed than I expected to. Caf? Delhi Heights is a new casual dining place in the Millennium City with enough beer and a live band to make it a haunt for after-office revelers. It is quite unlike the, shall we say, self-consciously trendy places of Delhi where dining and drinking become rather more formal (and expensive) affairs than you would want to indulge in were you in need of some simple de-stress. It is chic in a cool, boho, global way that we do not really encounter often enough in India yet. But what really stands out is the way in which the menu has been constructed: in a totally fun, irreverent manner.
Despite the boom in F&B concepts across the country, one thing that comes across clearly enough in menus, if you examine them closely, is the lack of the fun factor. Globally, innovative casual dining by way of, say, food trucks and barbecue pop-ups in empty parking lots, are clearly upping the ?fun? quotient in food.
In India, on the other hand, you find chefs and menus to be much more self-conscious, trying too hard to be ?cutting edge? sometimes, and at other times content to tow ?tradition? in a mindless way. Food is serious business, after all, and the attempt today, across restaurants in the country, is to overwhelm the diner with fancy ingredients, techniques and recipes.
But with our young demographic that may not be the best course to follow always. As diners get easier in their own skins, simple, comfort food, but with a witty take to it, is likely to get appreciated (and bought) more. And a place like Caf? Delhi Heights has got this element quite right with a menu that takes familiar street- and home-style recipes and plays around with them. Thus we have here the likes of a brilliant khichdi done with arborio (the risotto) rice, but Indian seasoning, keema-stuffed gol gappe and, indeed, even vada-pav and simple bread-butter fancied up but reminiscent of college canteens. It works quite well.
Looking at the infinitely complicated (and sometimes impossible to understand) menus and dishes served up at our restaurants today, you may not really believe it, but fun in food is not something new or alien to the culture of eating out in the country. Indeed, it has been an essential part of many traditional dining experiences. In Hyderabad, Lucknow and Delhi, for instance, one of the well-established tropes of traditional banquets, has been the paheli ka khana?where cooks prepared dishes meant to flummox the guests and earn a chuckle or two in the process.
During wedding celebrations, for instance, a lukmi, the puffed Hyderabadi pastry, would be stuffed with (live) quail that would fly out the moment the bridegroom poked these open. This was a rather extreme way of building in the element of fun, but there are equally clear examples of ?mock? meats having been prepared from vegetarian ingredients and the gourmets of yesteryear reveling in inventive food as a valid entertainment form.
Globally, too, some of the best recipes that we all love today have come out of this same joy de vivre infused into cooking. Take for instance, the efforts of playful street chefs converting the self-important French baguette into the Vietnamese banh mi, often voted the world?s best sandwich, where mayo and pate (or Chinese-style barbecued pork) doused in soy sauce make for excellent fillings alongside a range of Asian condiments!
Then there is the story of the paella, originally from Valencia, thought to have originated when a Moorish king?s servant threw together all the leftovers from the royal banquet into his rice dish. Or, according to another story, that originated when 19th century peasants made their lunch in the fields with rice, snails, vegetables, and on special occasions, rabbit and chicken, in a simple pan. There?s also the story of the much-loved pasta puttanesca (literally, ?whore’s pasta?), ostensible concocted in Naples by local women of easy virtue, where all ingredients are just as easy to procure, making this is a quick and satisfying meal!
There?s the ?beggar?s chicken? from northern China, wrapped and baked in mud, attributed to, as the name suggests, a very poor but inventive man indeed. And similar stories in all the food cultures of the world where the best and most famous dishes came out of happy accidents, inventive foodies and not-scared-to-bung-in-flavours ordinary folk. When it comes to food, there?s a fact that we all instinctively understand: there must be a sense of joy and creativity to it.
The writer is a food critic