Indian restaurants—the chefs of which fantasise about ornate French cuisine, which never quite picked up in India, and find their patrons eating pretty sushis off the hands of the chefs in the neighbouring Japanese eateries—have finally decided to do the same to the melange we call Indian cuisine, contemporise it. The innovation hasn’t reached Kochi or Kota yet and hasn’t touched everything from aviyal to aam panna, but it has begun in earnest.

If you step into Varq, the swish restaurant at The Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi, its signature crab dish is not dunked in a bowl of gravy, or unceremoniously sautéed and laid out. There is a sprinkle of turmeric and the meat is spiked with pepper, but it is laid out between layers of ever-so-thin filo pastries with a spicy tandoori prawn curled up on top. “It took us five years to transform the traditional Indian food of our earlier restaurant Haveli into a gastronomic fare at Varq,” says Amit Choudhary, executive chef of The Taj. “We eat with our eyes first. While the French and the Japanese made it a thumb rule in their kitchens long ago, now Indian chefs are now warming up to idea.” But if you ask for rice or roti to go with this elegant-looking crab, Choudhary might just add it to his improved list of blasphemy.

That is another thing that is happening in these new Indian kitchens, which are stacked with old spices but simpering with new dining mores. If Indians are known to happily, unrestrainedly have their food, not quite worried about courses and hardly bothering about pairings, now the chef’s hand rules. And it is eating into the Indian diner’s freedom. Food historian Jiggs Kalra says, “Every Indian is capable of turning a chef’s nightmare into a reality when he mixes dishes in his plate. A degustation menu should be a part of every Indian restaurant,” he says. In the early 20th century, the French introduced menu de degustation for their patrons who would be treated to small portions of the chef’s signature dishes. And Kalra is going Gallic to that extent, rolling out the concept at The Punjab Grill at the Ambience Mall in Gurgaon.

Choudhary, who has rolled out a degustation menu where a lamb galouti is paired with an ambi panna and finished with a masala tea crème brulee, says bawarchis of rajas and nawabs had their own degustation menus though they never aspired to such a tongue-twisting term. “Chefs would play around with colour combinations and garnishings. These small servings steadily evolved into the thali concept. But now it’s time we moved to the next level.”

The trick is to keep the food authentic, rooted in spices though the heat is minimised, but making it look haute enough for a diner who has tasted the cuisines of the world. The restaurants are aiming as much at the well-heeled tourist as they are to the experimenting local people. Little wonder that the alchemy is happening at home, not abroad. This is unlike the story of Japanese cuisine whose makeover happened not in Kyoto or Tokyo, but in the melting pot called Los Angeles.
The Book of Sushi by Kinjiro Omae and Yuzuru Tachibana credits Ichiro Manashita of the Tokyo Kaikan restaurant in Los Angeles for inventing the California roll in the 1970s. This inside-out sushi was created when the chefs realised that Americans were not too fond of chewing on nori.

Most Indian restaurateurs insist that the transformation of the curries began in the early 1980s when the chefs flew to foreign lands and brought back international styles and kitchen standards. “Southeast Asian countries like Singapore have influenced the change that is happening on Indian platters,” says Abdul Rehman Qureshi, executive chef at The Metropolitan Hotel, New Delhi.

And these chefs have all the passion of new converts. Rahul Akerkar’s new menu at Mumbai’s Indigo brings out dishes that play on known flavours — his tuna does taste of Indian spices — but when it sits on a bed of black peas and is surrounded by clove and wine reduction, it doesn’t look Indian.

You find something similar happening to the newly drafted menu at Fire at The Park, Delhi. “We just need to tweak the final product a bit and it’s a visual delight on the dining table. Cuisines from Tamil Nadu and Kerala already boast of exciting garnishing and offer a kaleidoscope of colours. We are also bringing in New Zealand lamb shanks and Scottish Salmon into traditional cooking,” says the chef Bakshish Dean.

The calories are also going down. “We use a combination of cooking styles to keep a check on calories that go into each dish,” he says. So a tandoori raan will first be simmered in the oven with a combination of roasting and steaming to keep it juicy, and the finishing touches would be made at the charcoal grill.
Food consultant Sudha Kukreja, however, feels that the modernising of Indian food will remain a forte of swanky restaurants for a long while to come. “Other restaurants hardly risk that kind of effort and people are too busy to bother about what their ghar ka khana looks like”.

While traditionalists raise an eyebrow, and not necessary the fork, Abdul Rehman Qureshi, who has penned a new menu at Chutney, the Indian diner at Metropolitan, Delhi, happily exposes the samosa and insists that local diners are ready to experience the vast offerings of Indian food beyond the regular fare. But he is also playing it a little safe, with a “Family Style” selection to keep the conservative diners happy. Choudhary, too, has stories of guests shocked by this new-look Indian dish and walking out of his restaurant, “We need to educate people that the food still cooked in the handis and skewers, only the final product is trimmed and pepped up.”
Tradition takes time to be skewed — but the beginning has been made.