?Two fistfuls of browned onions blended with 300 grams of yoghurt. That is the secret to old Delhi curries.? Sadia Dehlvi, columnist and writer, belonging to one of Delhi?s oldest families, as her very surname indicates, is giving me some quick insights into the food of purani Dilli.

Despite the great fanfare surrounding it and eager beavers from all over the world ready to brave the Delhi belly to sample kebabs and chaats off its streets, much of Shahjahanabad?s cuisine is dying. Dehlvi?s aloo-gosht salan, the recipe she has been teaching me ahead of a food festival at the Claridges, Surajkund, is proof of that. Few know how to do even this simple, home-style dish today. Certainly not in commercial restaurants and catering set-ups, where the finer nuances of cooking are often lost and everything dubbed a generic ‘qorma’. And apart from Dehlvi?s salan (a term used for homely lamb curries cooked with vegetables, as opposed to the richer, special occasion qormas), there are other elusive delicacies too that you may just barely find in the homes of other old families. Like Nargisi kofte, hard boiled eggs wrapped in mince and cut into halves to remind you (if you possess a vivid imagination) of lilies; bharwan badam pasande, tied with a thread, stuffed with the goodness of almonds and so painstaking to make that no one attempts them anymore; pista lauz, made of pure pistachios, light unlike the khoya-laden barfis of today; not to mention crispy, puffed up bedmi served with a tangy aloo subzi whose secret and complexity lies in a dash of a bitter fenugreek seed chutney added to it while cooking?

Delhi?s older cuisine may be lost even in new Delhi. But look around and you will realise that it is hardly alone. Despite the wealth of diverse regional cuisines that we have in India, few, very few, have made it to the mainstream and been incorporated into restaurant or even party menus. While the rest of the world is increasingly going back to the basics, turning its back to El Bulli type of fussy luxury and rediscovering solid local dishes as epicurean delights, in India, we remain stuck in the quagmire of restaurantised Indian food?generic Punjabi/Mughlai bites, basterdised Chettinad, north-Indianised Bengali, or halwai-style dosa-idli quick fixes.

With organised food retail coming into its own in the metros and F&B booming, thanks to the aspirational middle-class consumer, restaurants in India have never seen it better. Ambitious ventures, high on style, are being planned everyday and foreign cuisines that experts may have dismissed as ‘too adventurous’ for the market even five years ago are gaining easy foothold. Yet, amidst so much consumption, regional and community-based Indian cuisines continue to languish, inexplicably consigned to the back burner. You could count on your fingers the number of restaurants that will give you specialised offering like authentic slow-cooked sali boti, apricots simmering with meat; tikhat malvani crab curries, the clean flavours of a paturi or indeed the sourness of a tenga, the delicious interplays in a chemeen biryani, fiery bites from Rayalseema, satiating feasts from Udupi, and the cultural pot pourri of Pondicherry. Small restaurants offering some of these regional delicacies may be confined to their points of origin, but find a larger, stylish restaurant in a metro or tier-II city serving these up and you would have stumbled upon a rare miracle.

Indian restaurants are the biggest money spinners in the business ?anyone in the restaurant trade will tell you that. And yet, these seem to be governed by clich?s?butter chicken, dal makhni, dosa-idli, at best chicken 65 and rogan josh? food that no one really eats at home?just what some five star hotels and restaurateurs in the 1970s-80s created to fulfill the demands of a handful of people who ate out. So why don?t we see many more regional or community cuisines being served up in our restaurants?

The image problem

Regional Indian cuisines are a product of geography, history and, most importantly, caste or religion. And they are too numerous to even attempt to classify?unlike the cuisines of the West or indeed the far East. In fact, each family would have its own distinct way of doing even common dishes like a sambhar, fish or potato curry. Not all of these, of course, can or even should make it to commercial menus, because after all for a cuisine to be saleable it needs to be suitably aspirational and ‘exotic’–something more than plain ‘homely’, which will evoke curiosity and which people will be inclined to pay for?sometimes heavily. ?In the UK?, says chef Manish Mehrotra of Indian Accent, a contemporary Indian diner in Delhi that uses regional recipes and turns them into European-style, individually plattered dishes, ?there are many dedicated food channels that celebrate local heroes? a guy making clotted cream somewhere in Scotland, for instance.?

The chef is pointing to the trend of exoticising the local that seems to have overtaken gastronomy in the West. To do the same with regional or community-based Indian cuisines is a tempting proposition?and something that restaurateurs agree would make these more saleable. As of now, many regional cuisines in India suffer from an image problem of sorts. ?In London and elsewhere, Thai food, for instance, has the same problem. It is regarded as cheap. In India, cuisines like Assamese or Oriya, which are so rich and can easily sustain a restaurant, have the same problem,? adds Mehrotra. So, while a litti stall at one of Delhi?s malls does fairly good business, even Mehrotra has to concede that if there is a ?Bihari food festival or restaurant, few people will even be curious to try it out?.

In fact, this problem of image is one that mars a majority of regional Indian cuisines. And one of the best examples is the problem with ‘south Indian’ food. Long synonymous with Udupi-style dosas-idlis, today the definition has got extended to include the likes of appams and stew as well as Chettinad chicken. But while an Andhra thali may work at a low-cost Andhra Bhavan canteen in New Delhi and Gunpowder, a ‘non-restaurant’ serving home-style food from the four peninsular states, succeed beyond expectation, serving authentic south Indian meals in posher restaurants is a problem because people invariably come expecting dosa-idli-thalis even at places where you can pair your gassi with wine or sample elusive delicacies like kebabs from Tanjore (!) as you can in Dakshin, the ITC brand. It?s a problem of perception that restaurateurs just don?t know how to address. ?Each time we discuss this internally, we land up arguing,? admits chef Praveen Anand, executive chef at ITC Sheraton Park in Chennai, who oversaw the setting up of the first Dakshin 20 years ago in Chennai.

In Mumbai, this is the same problem with Parsi food?coupled with the notorious reluctance for gourmet adventure that the Indian diner has a reputation for. With numbers dwindling, the Parsis are a sub-one lakh, tiny community under serious threat of extinction. But even their cuisine seems destined to go the same way?unless some savvy marketing can step in right away.

Chef Kaizad Patel, who is a Parsi and runs a catering company in Mumbai, says he is an important man alright. ?Right after fixing up their daughter?s wedding, and even before fixing the date, they call me up to ask if I am available on those dates. That is the level of importance Parsis attach to food,? he says. But obviously that is not enough to save the cuisine. While Parsi weddings may see lavish feasts?beyond dhan sak (which is a mourning dish, not a specialty)–to which guests make a beeline, finding a legit Paris restaurant even in Mumbai is rare. Cafes in areas like Fort with a dominant Parsi presence may serve a couple of popular dishes, but specialised restaurants are non-existent (though one does exist in London, Patel tells us). The cafes tweak whatever they serve to suit local palates (say, Gujarati, vegetarian ones?which is why ‘modern’ Parsi food may even have paneer akoori!). Meanwhile, old timers in the community continue to patronise their favourite joints. All this makes setting up a new, upmarket, standalone seem like an impossible proposition. Patel doubts whether there will be enough takers from outside the community for that and whether those within will be willing to pay more than the basic minimum should such a restaurant even be attempted: In short, yet another problem with positioning/marketing.

However, restaurateurs claiming the above to be insurmountable obstacles, only have to look at the most successful restaurant ever in India, Bukhara. Serving a rather limited menu with the same dishes that you may find at neighbourhood restaurants, albeit without the branding (the celebrated Dal Bukhara may be cooked just right, but what is it other than good old dal makhani?), the restaurant, of course, offers great insights into successful marketing. Its sibling, the infinitely more elegant Dumpukht, too managed to bring Avadhi cuisine into the mainstream thanks to the well-oiled ITC machinery. But without the might of the five-stars behind them, independent restaurateurs fear treading into unknown regional territories.

Well-known restaurateur and caterer Marut Sikka, for instance, contends that while micro-regional or community-specific cuisines may succeed commercially in small set-ups (like the mom-and-pop Oriya restaurants that have come up in Bangalore to cater to the techies from that state), they may not in larger, more ambitious restaurants because when an average Indian family comes to dine they predominantly want what they are comfortable with. Hotel restaurants report the same thing. So while novel food festivals may relieve the tedium of daily menus, most diners will not really try out those bites?sticking instead to their tikkas and paneer. The Indian consumer, then, needs to grow up. Those like Manish Mehrotra are more optimistic and say that with increased media attention and interest in food as part of a larger urban lifestyle, ?the boom will come?in the next five years?.

Threats and opportunities

Not being in the commercial domain, of course, spells a death knell for many of India?s regional cuisines. ?After this generation of grannies, the cuisines will just die,? says ITC?s Praveen Anand. What he says is not exaggerated. With the all-pervasive forces of globalisation, community rituals, including those related to food and its cooking, are mattering less to an Indian household. And while Indian families do cook at home?unlike elsewhere in the world?modern ones increasingly tend to rely on packaged foods. Cosmopolitan sensibilities mean that time-consuming, slow-cooked regional dishes are hardly cooked any more, being replaced by easy-to-do general recipes, if not pasta, noodles and salad meals.

In Hyderabad, Begum Mumtaz Khan, from a well known Hyderabadi family, who has been cooking (and conducting cooking classes) for the past 40 years, has now given up taking classes for young girls for want of takers. Khan is a storehouse of knowledge?turning out not just Hyderabadi biryani, but also lesser-known recipes such as a Sufiani biryani, which is white and uses khoya, or a kachra biryani, using all the parts of the animal, including those regarded as waste. Some of these may have now been included in the menu at Aish, The Park Hyderabad?s new restaurant, but other than that, they show few signs of assuming centrestage. For now, Khan is content to make ready-mixed masalas for brides from Hyderabad going abroad and desirous of whipping up quick meals from back home. All other knowledge is very likely to be lost once Khan?s era ends.

Contrarily, it is precisely this gap that can serve as an opportunity for regional Indian restaurants. Community-centric micro-cuisines served up in smart surroundings can be bestsellers served up with a dollop of nostalgia.

Research road blocks

The other challenge here has to do with supply chains. Despite the wide variety of local produce that we have, we are unable to store and market it profitably. ?Just see local fruits from the Himalayas being dumped in sacks on top of buses and you will realise the enormous waste of it all,? points out chef Bakshish Dean, corporate chef with all-India chain LiteBite Foods. Dean grew up in Shimla and has fond memories of the hills. But instead of being able to use the bounties of nature from their home states, Dean and chefs like him are forced to rely on top quality, regularly-supplied foreign produce. Protectionist policies of states too hamper easy and cheaper access to ingredients. Black cardamom is grown in Assam where its price works out to be around Rs 1 per piece? but elsewhere it is so expensive, points out Anand. With prices of produce from other regions zooming up, regional restaurants become unviable.

Research, of course, is a grey area. ?Few chefs have the time or inclination these days to go out and research. They are managers,? says an industry insider. Instead, chefs tend to stick to the old formulae. If the Avadhi kebabs have been stellar successes, you will find everyone attempting them ad nauseum. ?Why can?t we do something on the vegetarian cooking of Avadh?? asks Dean. ?After all, there is more to the region than the Muslim cooking that we all know.? And why indeed is there such little exposure to Kashmiri Pandit food when its cousin, the Wazwan, has so many takers? Surely it has to do as much with the attitudes of hotels, restaurants and chefs as with practicalities and commerce.?

Those who do research are faced with the biggest constraint of them all?there are simply no codified recipes for traditional food. Unlike French cooking, there is no Bible for Indian cooking, delineating the cuisines of each region, relating them to history, sociology and culture, and putting down the exact ingredients needed for each a dish. ?That is something that has always perplexed me about Indian food,? says columnist and blogger Pamela Tims, a Delhiphile who tries out many local dishes. Kitchen knowledge is handed down from mother to daughter or from one maharaj or cook to another.

In the absence of any codification, everyone is free to do what they will?and often they make a mess. Rogan Josh has to be the single-most abused term on restaurant menus standing for any generic mutton gravy. Similarly, in the south, ‘Chettinad’ is now a generic term with every hotel that serves non-vegetarian food calling itself ‘Chettinad’. How is this food different from the food of the Tamil Muslims or Christians, or the Marathas (who ruled parts of the state) for instance, is a question that needs to be asked. And, of course, ‘Mughlai’ has long included butter chicken (a post-partition, Punjabi concoction) in the Indian consciousness. Any attempted codification of Indian cuisine(s) is a necessary but mammoth task; something where government intervention is required, say chefs. But obviously little thought has gone on in this direction. Few think of food as heritage in a country where more visible symbols are routinely neglected.

?The writer is a food critic