Bhapa ilish, the piece de resistance on the menu of any Bengali restaurant. Pieces of tender hilsa soaked in mustard paste and golden-brown mustard oil. One bite and the flavours—fiery mustard and smoked fish—swirl against the tongue and flame into the mouth. And your low-calorie pledge melts in abject surrender. Well, so what? If you are eating out, you can’t be eating healthy. Or can you? At Oh! Calcutta, a chain of restaurants spread over Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, the chefs have done the impossible: given bhapa ilish (and other traditional Bengali fare) a healthy makeover, by cooking it with (yes, believe it) a single drop of oil.

Oh! Calcutta is not alone in straining out the grease from good food. Saltz, the new cafe in Delhi’s Greater Kailash I, has a zero-oil menu that is immensely popular with its clients. Repeated requests from the hundreds who stomp into his theatres every weekend prompted Ajay Bijli, the owner of PVR cinemas, to sanction a new zero-oil menu at theatres across the country. A couple of months ago, DLF employees sent in a request to Vandana Luthra, owner of the VLCC chain of slimming centres for fat-free food at their cafe Alive in DLF, Gurgaon. Luthra readily complied.

Yes, urban Indians are eating out in huge numbers. But in the gloom of obesity warnings and cholesterol alerts, they are also forcing restaurateurs across the country to come up with healthier alternatives. “People are conscious of what they eat and what food adds how much calories to their body. So eating healthy when eating out is a spin-off from that awareness,” says Sudha Kukreja, owner of Saltz.

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