New experiences are for the adventurous. India’s tribal and aboriginal cuisine is the new gastronomic exploit among discerning gourmets.
India discovered Northeastern cuisine a decade ago, as youth from these regions left home to look for better jobs and lifestyle.
Now, it’s the turn of the food of Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya to grace restaurant tables, or as the case may be, make for online orders.
There is a good reason for this: indigenous food depends on non-commercial ingredients in their preparations and therefore affords original flavours, far superior to their urban counterpart. It’s organic, fresh, seasonal, and abundantly nutritious.
“All cuisines in the world have had a tribal origin, which is the foundation of modern cuisine,” says Vikramjit Roy, Founder and Executive Chef, Hello Panda. Santa’s Fantasea in Kolkata is getting more footfall than before. Word of mouth has made its tribal food menu a rage. Khasi cuisine of Meghalaya is heavily non-vegetarian and includes lots of pork, meat and beef smoked or marinated. Bamboo has a big say in tribal cooking because of its availability in hilly areas.
Bansapora Chicken from Kolkata, which is marinated fowl stuffed in a bamboo stem and cooked over tandoor, can be on most tables in the city. Don’t forget to order a portion of Jadoh generously mixed with mutton from Meghalaya, a Khasi rice dish. “The Kukhurako Masu, a chicken dish smeared in coconut, tamarind and house spices, is quite exotic for the uninitiated,” says Saimy Mitra, a food enthusiast who has seen the tribal food trends change through the years.
A Khasi dessert that easily gives competition on an urban menu is Pukhlein, a deep-fried jaggery and rice dish. “There is Mylliem, chicken cooked with different condiments. There’s Dohkhlieh, a unique salad made with boiled pork with onions and chillies. As you move towards Manipur and Mizoram, their tribal recipes can work beautifully in a regional restaurant and be commercially viable too, like Singju, a salad with lotus stems, onions, sesame, beans, cabbage, coriander, and roasted chickpea,” says Roy. He is sure it’s a fabulous dish waiting to be discovered.
As people began to show interest in niche flavours, select culinary visionaries saw a remarkable opportunity in the tribal smorgasbord. Whether it’s the wild spread at Jungli restaurant in Jharkhand or the tribal feast at Pisces in Kolkata, each attempts to keep sacred traditions alive. “The only way we can promote tribal cuisine further is by not bastardising their flavours. These restaurants are successful precisely because of that,” says Roy. Fancy bona fide Adivasi food from Jharkhand? Ajam Emba, a restaurant- -cum-cooking school, is quite the rage in Ranchi.
It’s a unique endeavour, run by an all-woman team. The place cannot be called fancy but the preparations are. You sit cross-legged when you eat like the tribals unless you specially request for a table and chair. “Highlights are Ghonghi Tiyan, Sanei Phool Bharta, and Getu Fish Curry which are yet to debut in other city restaurants,” says Aruna Dasgupta, Kolkata-based food writer and patron of tribal cuisine.
Restaurateurs and food experts are putting a lot of focus and energy into research on tribal food. “Restaurateurs are taking into account the flavour profiles of a particular tribal community instead of modifying a dish’s essence to attract numbers. Spending time visiting these far-out regions is the best way to truly understand their food. To make the tribal food segment larger, menu diversity needs to become bigger,” Roy feels.
At Delhi’s well-known Dzukou Tribal Kitchen that serves Northeastern cuisine, nearly 80 percent of the guests are not from the Northeast. In the beginning, such speciality restaurants were predominantly visited by diners from that region but things have changed. “We get mostly expats who love tribal food since they rarely get it anywhere else. The Japanese are our biggest guest segment,” says owner and chef Karen Yepthomi from Nagaland. Try her Smoked Pork with Axone and you’ll definitely return for more. A new tribe of diners is being born.