At the fag end of 2011, as I sit down to a degustation menu at what has been one of the hottest foodie launches of the year (come, send in your votes if you disagree), the Smoke House Room (located in Crescent Mall, Qutub, Delhi), it is literally a light bulb moment. True to the school of thought that says you must wow the audience first if you hope to capture it, chef Gresham Fernandez sends in a surprise not on the menu. The platter arrives with a real light bulb. Of course, it?s mere casing. The bulb opens to reveal what looks like foil-wrapped Ferrero Rocher chocolate. Could this be it? Surely not. Just as you begin to be amused by this Chinese-box kind of a situation, the secret is revealed. Inside the chocolate wrapper is chicken pate, fashioned into an incredibly silky, rich, buttery round that you can?t help but admire, even if liver?or gimmickry with food?leaves you cold.

As the all-consuming Indian diner gets more sophisticated and receptive to trying out new things, chefs are pushing the envelope, hoping to break the clutter in the market (and there is a lot of clutter given that the organised Indian restaurant industry is growing so phenomenally) with food that is not just being presented in a way to evoke that ?wow?, but cooked in unprecedented ways.

The last year or two have seen an increasing number of young chefs and restaurateurs taking risks, bringing exciting new food and concepts to the market, and in what is surely a vote of confidence for creativity, Indian audiences have been giving thumbs up to many of these ventures?at least those run with a modicum of honesty, and, well, sense. This leads me to conclude that the one thing you can look forward to sampling in 2012, perhaps much more than you ever have within Indian restaurants, is innovation.

Fernandez is hardly the only chef playing around with ideas and techniques to give us something unique. In Bangalore, chef Abhijeet Saha?s restaurant Caperberry continues to be feted, having recently won a slew of the best restaurant awards handed out by various groups. He?ll put anything from blue-cheese crusted smoked duck to a deconstructed (where chefs take a classic dish and use the same elements but different cooking techniques to give their own version of the dish) tiramisu, where the defining flavours come from the coffee sponge and coffee jelly rather than mascarpone. In Delhi and Mumbai, chefs Manish Mehrotra and Vineet Bhatia continue to redefine Indian flavours while wining popular appeal.

Cuisine as art

But more than this league of well-known chefs, the difference in how far we have traversed from chicken-dunked-in-curry days can now be perceived in almost every buffet, every drink and dessert, even every chicken tikka you may land up ordering. Everything, from individually set yoghurt in specially crafted earthen containers to mango and ice cream that looks like fried egg, sunny side up, to chicken tikka layered with olive tapenade to even the butter chicken khichdi/risotto high on the fun quotient, points to creativity in Indian restaurant kitchens that is set to enjoy a new high this year.

A recent culinary competition of young chefs in Bangalore saw an overwhelming number of participants attempting such cutting-edge cuisine. But is innovation only air and foam, using elements of molecular gastronomy long after El Bulli hosted its last meal and celeb chefs the world over are attempting to open casual restaurants (or gourmet pizzerias) serving wholesome food? While it is a fact that both Indian audiences and chefs are enthralled with ?new? techniques that are actually at least five to six years old globally, if not more. Given the fact that Indian diners are under-exposed to these, the current streak of kitchen creativity, thankfully, seems to run deeper.

Innovation in the kitchen is much more than mere plating. For our best chefs, it is their very thought process, culinary philosophies and sometimes personalities translated on to the plate. The juxtaposition of hot with cold, contrasting flavours, textures, reinterpretation of pop/street or classic Indian dishes, the use of sous vide or spherification, or gastronomy and co are, in fact, all attempts to treat cuisine as a form of art, as a central tenet of a cosmopolitan culture, where the old and new can coexist simultaneously. And it is this?the fact that chefs are now daring to experiment like artists, that they are in fact thinking that is cause for cheer in the new year.

celebrating tradition

Speak to some of our best chefs and you will be struck by their passion of trying to work with local flavours and produce. The fact that Indian produce (meats and vegetables) is not on a par with restaurant-focused ingredients from abroad because of lack of storage and cold chains, as also our obsession with imported, luxury ingredients means that most restaurants now want to include salmon, lobster, foie gras, New Zealand lamb, wasabi, caviar (even though it is no longer a luxury ingredient, being widely farmed everywhere), et al on their menus, not the least to ensure bigger margins. But thinking young chefs are now presenting cutting-edge cuisine, reworking traditional recipes and using simple, local ingredients.

When Matt Preston, the popular judge of MasterChef Australia, visited India recently, one of his halts was the Bangalore Olive. Chef Manu Chandra presented him with a sampling of lamb?with haleem puree, boudin (a kind of sausage) of goat brain and saut?ed sweetbreads. Accompanying this was beet salad with kashundi dressing; the sweet of the beet a contrast to the tang of the kashundi. Similarly, when Alain Passard (held to be the best chef in the world helming the three star Michelin L?Arpege) came calling, Chandra put on the platter a bathua ravioli with toasted char magaz seeds, thus stressing the Indian context to the meal. Like fashion and luxury, the best food and best restaurant food also needs to celebrate local traditions.

Appetite for risk

If food is being innovated on, so are restaurant formats and 2012 is set to see one of the most ambitious projects of its kind this year by way of a luxury, all-vegetarian, Ayurvedic-centric brand to be ushered in by the cigarettes-to-hospitality major, ITC. The desire to innovate?and, more importantly, with thought to quality and authenticity?is at all ends of the spectrum. If Megu, the New York sushi restaurant, opens its doors to the Indian public at The Leela this month, Ethiopian flavours, not to mention regional Indian ones and even a neighbourhood chain of only vegetarian tandoori offerings, are all hoping to find their mark with the public at large.

Above all, it is the appetite for risk that seems to have grown. Chefs and restaurateurs in their search to better themselves will not play safe. Zambar, Litebite Food?s south-Indian restaurant in Delhi, has, for instance, just hired a non-professional home chef to run its kitchens for a more authentic experience. It?s a unique experiment brought about by a corporate chef (Bakshish Dean) with a fine understanding of and commitment to quality food. As we usher in 2012, it is by saying cheers to the cause.

The writer is a columnist with FE