With city-based restaurants and bars frequently featured on international best restaurants lists, the rest of the world is slowly realising what Bengalureans have known - the world is not just your oyster here, it’s every dish you can imagine. “Lucknow has all its history, Bombay pretends to be the best food city, and to a certain extent is, in fine dining. But Bengaluru gives you choice,” explains Chef Manu Chandra, founder partner, Lupa.
Born in Delhi, trained in New York but calling Bengaluru home, Chandra’s hand has been felt all over the city’s food spaces since 2004, when he started off at Olive Bar and Kitchen. A much sleepier city, poised at the start of the IT boom, it was a place that Chandra calls ‘both conservative and progressive in different ways’. He remembers the difference today, saying, “Bengaluru summarily rejected us, people thought we were pretentious even though we were not. At the same time, all the expats loved us and thought this is what international food should be. Sometimes the market needs to catch up.”
And catch up it did, a move that experts unanimously attribute to the IT boom – bringing young people with disposable income who were looking for something to do on the weekends. This gave rise to a culture of cafes and microbreweries that is still thriving, but hospitality professional Aslam Gafoor notices a big shift five years ago, as the pandemic wound down. “There was a demographic shift and since then, there has been openness to experimentation and experiences. It’s not just about eating out, it’s ‘What do I bring as a memory from those meals?’,” he says, noting that the city met this with ‘a wave of young chefs’ starting places like Fervor, Fireside, Comal with unique cuisines – Vietnamese, Mexican, Thai, Cambodian etc.,” he shares. Internationally ranked bars
like ZLB 23, Soka and Bar Spirit Forward as well as popular chef-led restaurants in Bengaluru, Eat Naru and Farmlore, started during or right after the pandemic too. The latter’s founder Kaushik Raju, agrees with Gafoor, adding, “Before, fine dining was more [star] hotel-based but there was a shift to standalone restaurants focusing on finer food.”
Being one of the restaurant’s on Asia’s 100 Best restaurants this year, Raju points out the effect these international lists have saying, “They create curiosity – we see people travelling from other cities just to eat now, which I don’t think would have happened before, despite drawing local crowds.” This exposure has led Raju to host several collaborative pop-ups with chefs from South Korea, Chile and more which he notes were ‘born from friendship and shared approaches towards food’.
Chandra also draws attention to a demographic that is often ignored in the conversation but is key to shaping Bengaluru’s international food culture: students. “Bengaluru is a South Indian educational hub with people from all over India, Africa and Asia coming here. So there are parts like Kammanahalli, a student hub, which see entire stretches of the most incredible Ethiopian, Nigerian, Vietnamese, Malaysian food in small silos.” He adds that while fine dining is part of the story, it’s thriving competition at every level that makes Bengaluru noteworthy. “Bangalore has a democratic culture so every place is competition for the next – the same person who will spend Rs 4,000 to Rs 15,000 at Lupa, goes to a small place serving dosae and naati chicken curry. It’s the same ecosystem,” he says.
Where next?
When asked if anything hasn’t caught on in Bengaluru, each expert takes a long moment to think. One that emerges though is African food. Remembering a couple that have popped up over the years but have since closed, Kerwin Savio Nigli, the Head of Department of Hotel Management at Christ University, attributes it to a difference in palates. “African cuisine tends to have few spices, a gooey texture with tapioca-based dishes, which is unfamiliar. It’ll take time,” he says. An emerging space that chefs see opening up is not something from a foreign land but an opportunity to take a second, more discerning look at Karnataka’s own cuisine. “I know a bunch of people who come here and have access to all of this food, but are familiar only with idli and dosae when it comes to local food. I see this changing slightly with Malgudi Mylari Mane, Super Naati and Holige Mane bringing local Karnataka food at the mid-casual and upper dining. That’s something which will gain popularity over the next year,” shares Raju. Gafoor points to other states that have been relatively less explored in the city’s plates, saying, “We could still do a lot more with Odissi and Bihari food - there are pockets of these cuisines but none in the limelight.”
(With inputs from Kalyani Warrier)