Midway through your meal at Mumbai’s Masque restaurant, a plate of black rice pasta makes an appearance—a reimagined version of farra from Chhattisgarh. But you’re not prepared for what comes alongside it: a small bowl of toasted red ants! Head chef Varun Totlani suggests you sprinkle a spoonful on the pasta for a toasty crunch and mildly lemony zing. “Some people are happy to try them instantly, while others might come around to it after some deliberation. There have been guests who have hesitantly tried the ants and then asked for a second helping. That’s my favourite part of the experience—introducing guests to new flavours and helping palates evolve, one ingredient at a time,” he says. There’s a reason Masque is consistently listed among India’s best restaurants. Every dish celebrates a regional Indian cuisine, an interesting ingredient, or a forgotten technique—sometimes all three.
Even at Papa’s in Mumbai, where a seat at Chef Hussain Shahzad’s table gets snagged in mere seconds, red ants make an appearance in a dish called Bugs Bunny. It’s a shawarma of sorts with rabbit meat grilled over coal and glazed with red weaver ant tare to give it a tangy twist. “The recipe takes inspiration from the traditional red ant chutney known as kai chutney, a staple in certain tribal cuisines of Odisha and Chhattisgarh,” says Shahzad. The ants are sourced from Jharkhand, where they are commonly found feeding on sweet potato leaves. They are carefully ground and blended with a medley of aromatics and vinegar, to balance their natural acidity, resulting in a complex glaze that elevates the dish.
It’s not just about the ants. Across India, chefs are digging deep, literally and figuratively, into the soil, forests, and forgotten corners of their native landscapes to spotlight hyperlocal ingredients and regional wisdom. Deep in the pine forest of Himachal Pradesh, Chef Prateek Sadhu is serving pine skewers with smoked bottle gourd at Naar, while at Sienna Cafe & Store in Kolkata, Chef Koyel Roy Nandy is shattering caste stigmas by putting innards like brain and liver in bar bites, and at Chennai’s Kappa Chakka Kandhari, Chef Regi Mathew is spotlighting humble ingredients like tapioca and jackfruit.
Bold and the bountiful
Given India’s vast size and mind-boggling diversity, the term “Indian food” was never adequate to encompass everything that was on offer. Yet, for the longest time, the culinary scene was limited to “North Indian” or “South Indian” restaurants or that catch-all, neither-here-nor-there multi-cuisine restaurant. Regional diversity rarely made it to the plate. However, over the past few years, there has been a noticeable shift towards regional Indian cuisines. “We have so much culinary wealth, but people are not aware of the food because they have not seen it. Chefs are now seeing the potential of regional Indian cuisines and recreating them in a restaurant scenario,” says Mathew. As the co-founder and culinary director of Kappa Chakka Kandhari, he highlights the breadth of Kerala cuisine, particularly through the lens of its emblematic produce, i.e., kappa (tapioca), chakka (jackfruit), and kandhari (bird’s eye chilli). “Most Kerala houses have a kitchen garden where they grow these vegetables in their backyard. So, there’s a nostalgic value attached to it,” he says. A star dish on his menu is kappa vevichathu with kudampuliyitta meen curry, a tangy homestyle fish curry made with kudampuli or Malabar tamarind that is prepared in an earthen pot and served with tapioca mash in coconut masala.
Even North Indian restaurants are looking beyond the butter chicken trope; for example, Ikk Panjab in Delhi serves culinary treasures from undivided Punjab. So you have dishes from the other side of the border such as dohra kebab (mutton seekh encasing chicken seekh), Rawalpindi chooza (succulent whole baby chicken cooked in a clay oven), Ferozepuri crispy macchi, and more. The recently opened Loya at the Taj Mahal Palace, Mumbai also offers a delicious journey through northern India with dishes that you usually don’t find on fine-dining menus, such as bhanjeer murg (chicken cooked with hemp seeds), Kangra khodiya gosht (pahadi-style mutton curry with hand-ground, charred walnut ink), and dal jakhiya.
At Sienna Store & Cafe in Kolkata, co-head chef Koyel Roy Nandy steers clear of the well-trodden kosha mangsho-aloo poshto-cholar dal route; instead the focus is on bringing to light the diversity of Bengal by presenting stories from both the east and west of the region while reflecting the seasonality of the baajaars or local markets. So, you have dishes such as a refreshing baajaar ceviche with tangy kaacha aam broth and tabak maaz mete aloo or yam mash served with a drizzle of mustard oil—all quintessentially Bengali flavours but presented in unexpected ways.
Mountain magic
When it comes to highlighting regional Indian cuisine, perhaps the most focus can be seen on two contiguous but very distinct locales—the Himalayan belt and the northeastern states. At his 16-seater restaurant Naar, chef-owner Sadhu wants to tell the stories of different Himalayan cultures. “Climate changes drastically here, from Kashmir to Himachal Pradesh to Uttarakhand. It plays an important role in defining what we put on the plate,” he says. One of the dishes that defines mountain cuisine according to him is sundarkala or kukla. This comforting breakfast dish from northern Uttarakhand consists of hand-pulled noodles served with meat and vegetables and tempered with wild onion and garlic greens. “This dish came into India from Tibet via trade, and we made it our own; there are even folk songs about this dish! We never talk about it because it's a noodle dish and is not considered ‘Indian’. But these stories need to be told because they are not just dishes, they are a part of our food culture,” says Sadhu.
Another restaurant spotlighting food from the Himalayan belt is Across in Mumbai. Here, husband-wife chef duo Viraf Patel and Prakriti Lama Patel present dishes featuring mountain ingredients such as nettle, churpi cheese, timur (Himalayan peppercorn similar to Sichuan pepper), jimbu (aromatic herb from the onion family), and Himalayan trout—the last a star ingredient, increasingly seen on upscale menus around the country.
Culinary chronicler and consultant Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal, who herself champions Uttarakhand cuisine and food from the mountains, couldn’t be happier: “The only way you’re going to keep this food alive is by consuming it. I think it’s a great thing that we’ve got so many chefs talking about different regional cuisines and putting them on the plate. Even if it’s just a few people doing it right now and even if it’s a bit chaotic, everything is still driving conversation and awareness.”
North by northeast
Cuisine from the northeast of India is also slowly coming into the limelight, particularly Assamese and Naga cuisines. Restaurants such as Naga Belly in Mumbai and Dzukou Tribal Kitchen in Delhi offer a deep dive into the indigenous food and culture of the region. Thomas Zacharias, chef and founder of The Locavore, believes a wave of northeastern cuisine is in the offing. “I recently spent some time in Meghalaya, and one of the most interesting restaurants I came across was Mei Ramew Café in the village of Khweng, a couple of hours from Shillong. It is run by local communities and has a daily-changing menu that centres on ingredients that are grown or foraged in the area,” he says.
The pop-up model has also become a powerful tool for hyperlocal preservation. Chef and Northeast food curator Gitika Saikia builds her seasonal menus around traditional festivals. “I go beyond Bihu and focus on smaller community festivals. For example, the Mishing community celebrates its largest festival called Ali-Ai-Ligang in the month of February. This is a good opportunity for me to introduce new ingredients like fig leaves or water hyacinth to consumers; for me, it is a form of cultural preservation,” she says.
The good stuff
A noticeable trend is that rather than defining menus by regional cuisines, many chefs are shifting towards an ingredient-first philosophy. Shalini Phillip, co-owner of The Farm in Chennai, says, “Being cuisine-driven can be limiting. Whereas if you’re ingredient-driven, then you can do anything. That’s definitely the way forward.” Her Farm Walk Salad, for instance, features assorted lettuce and foraged herbs with a creamy dressing of manathakkali or black nightshade, a wild green commonly consumed as a stir-fry. “It’s very familiar to everybody in Tamil Nadu, but it's presented in an entirely different way than our guests would have experienced it,” she adds.
At Ekaa in Mumbai, being ingredient-driven has been the overarching philosophy since day one. Over the years, head chef and partner Niyati Rao has put locally sourced ingredients such as sea urchin, salmon trout roe, and Indian durian on the menu. This year, she is highlighting samphire or sea asparagus sourced from Kutch that’s served as a pickle. “I think why this matters so much is because it really awakens chefs and diners to the produce available in India. And the other thing is that it opens the playing field a little more when you get exotic ingredients that you see Michelin star chefs use,” she elaborates. On an earlier menu, Rao introduced mogri or radish pods, which are available only for a couple of weeks in winter. “I used to hate it as a child. It has a horseradish-like zinginess that I really appreciate now,” she says.
Rao is also currently enamoured with the extremely aromatic and citrusy Naga pepper. “I think it’s one of the rarest ingredients in India. It cannot be cultivated, only foraged. We infuse them in oil, which is used across many dishes,” she adds. Totlani points to ingredients such as cactus, prickly pear, and black potatoes. At the newly opened Bar Paradox, he thinly slices and fries black potatoes to make chips and serves them with thecha bone marrow (scraped right out of the bone).
Another ingredient that’s having its moment in the sun is mahua, which was once dismissed as a tribal intoxicant. Ensconced within Maharashtra’s Tipeshwar Wildlife Sanctuary, the restaurant Palaash at Tipai by Wildlife Luxuries is surrounded by mahua trees. So, it’s no surprise that Amninder Sandhu (director and founding partner) is incorporating it in the menu in inventive ways—from mahua chocolate florentines and mahua kala jamun to mahua syrup that comes with her millet pancakes. “For me, the whole idea of exploring hyperlocal ingredients came about because of our remote location and the unavailability of many ingredients,” she says. Other hyperlocal ingredients that star on the Palaash menu include ambaadi (roselle or gongura), which is served like a papdi chaat and kashiphal patta (pumpkin leaf), which features in the bamboo-smoked pork dish with Indrayani rice.
Speaking of northeastern ingredients, Saikia is partial to dhekia xaak or fiddlehead fern, a wild green that she grew up eating. She recommends stir-frying it with scrambled eggs or pork, or in the Assamese summer staple of fish boil. This dish also features ou tenga or elephant apple, a popular souring agent from the region that Saikia says can replace tomato in curries and stews.
Return to fire and earth
Food innovation in India is not only about sourcing the right ingredients; it also involves reviving traditional cooking techniques that were sustainable by design. At Palaash, Sandhu has incorporated underground pit cooking, a technique used historically in many indigenous Indian communities. “The kitchen is run by women from nearby villages who are not professionally trained, but they were able to quickly adapt to pit cooking because it’s how they traditionally cooked at home,” she says. Pit cooking is a slow, earthy way to let flavours develop naturally. “I’ve always wanted to have a restaurant kitchen where I can dig up the ground and cook something in it,” she adds. For her next menu change, Sandhu will have more dishes cooked in the pit. She also plans to involve guests in the process by having them marinate the meat and put it into the pit.
Until recently, fermentation was a buzzword in most high-end kitchens in India; indeed, it is still trending. But according to Sadhu, fermentation is past its time. So, what’s next? “In the mountains, it’s more about preservation through different ways such as drying, pickling, burying in the ground etc,” he elaborates. Through these approaches, chefs are not merely replicating old dishes but honouring the logic and sustainability that traditional Indian kitchens were built upon. As Mathew puts it: “It’s not only about ingredients. It’s also about respecting the cooking techniques, the cultural influences, and the deeper significance behind why foods are paired the way they are.”
New and true
As chefs dive deeper into hyperlocal ingredients and traditions, a critical question arises: how can innovation happen without distorting or diluting the essence of what’s being represented? Cookbook author and culinary consultant Saee Koranne-Khandekar notes that mindful innovation is critical: “By not succumbing to trends but approaching tradition mindfully, we can avoid hounding protected foods or inventing dishes just for the sake of it.” For her, new interpretations must emerge from true respect and understanding of the ingredient or tradition. “As an example, dhondas is a summer cucumber dish that is cooked on an open fire with burning embers or coconut husks on top. I’ve interpreted this as a dessert in my pop-ups in the form of a cucumber and coconut madeline served with ice cream. The base recipe is as traditional as can be, but I hope to bring it into the contemporary space,” she says.
Maharashtrian cuisine, which varies widely from Konkan to Vidarbha, is also under-represented when it comes to the dining landscape in India. At Avatara Mumbai, head chef Sanket Joshi pays homage to his home state by presenting a savoury version of the classic, festive sweet modak, but stuffing it with savoury sunchoke, which adds a layer of earthiness and depth. The okra thecha alongside adds spice and texture while the tangy kokum rassa beautifully balances the dish. “Hyperlocal ingredients aren’t just about produce; you have memories attached to them. Ingredients like kokum and goda masala are still being used in regional households, and I am using them as inspiration for dishes prepared at Avatara,” he says.
As executive chef of Hunger Inc. Hospitality, which runs The Bombay Canteen, O Pedro, and Papa’s in Mumbai, Shahzad is among the chefs at the forefront of innovation. “I’m exploring South Indian flavours because it’s the food culture that I grew up with. I come from a Bohri Muslim household, so I’m making a malai khaja, which is an intrinsic part of a Bohri thaal,” he says. However, it’s not the traditional crispy fried dough sweet. Instead Shahzad’s version comes with a burnt Brunost custard and caviar on top. For the vegetarians, it’s served with rhubarb jam and shaved Brunost from Eleftheria (a Mumbai-based cheesemaker making an award-winning version of the Norwegian caramelised milk cheese). “Most chefs today are trying to reimagine the ingredients of traditional dishes in a very different way. Now it’s the era of innovation in Indian food,” he adds. The most compelling culinary innovations today are those that engage with traditional wisdom deeply and critically—asking not just “What can I do with this ingredient?” but “How do I honour where it comes from?”
A cautionary note
As the spotlight shines on rarer ingredients, there’s a larger conversation to be had about sustainability. When demand for superfoods like avocado and quinoa skyrocketed internationally, the environmental and social consequences in their native cultivation areas in central and south America ranged from land use change and water depletion to loss of biodiversity. Even in India, the rising popularity of functional foods like millets and makhana has led to exponential price rise and disrupted supply. Phillip says, “When I see a product that’s been indigenously used all along suddenly becoming popular, a part of me is worried. I don’t want us to be over-harvesting or causing stress to their environment in our effort to get access to those ingredients.”
With the surge in interest in hyperlocal and regional Indian ingredients, there’s also the risk of commodifying them. “When you’re representing regional cuisines, the important thing is to have an understanding of the cuisine and ingredients in their context to that cuisine,” says Ghildiyal. One of her pet peeves is the indiscriminate addition of jakhiya to anything, all in the name of Uttarakhand cuisine. “I have tasted a pahadi thali in which jakhiya was in every single dish. It’s a crunchy spice that’s usually used with soft vegetables because it gives a lovely textural contrast. Many chefs want to work with regional cuisine, and they want to create a sensation, but it’s not nice if you’re disrespecting an ingredient in its context,” she adds.
Apart from chefs, media platforms and food content creators also have a responsibility here. Koranne-Khandekar asks a few pointed questions: “Are we studying cuisines and cultures at all? Are we genuinely making the effort to place cuisines in their social or historical contexts or just aping each other in the hope of some more views on Instagram and some more footfall in our restaurants? Or are we committed to the larger cause of enriching an experience not just for the diner, food book reader, or content consumer but also for the farmer, the cook, and the fisherman?” It’s certainly food for thought.
Stepping up
The hyperlocal movement is not just a trend; it is a response to globalisation, environmental concerns, and cultural amnesia. Zacharias says, “It’s a movement to really reconnect with traditions and cuisines but also bring it to the 21st century and explore what it means in today’s context and going forward.” As Sadhu aptly puts it: “We are borrowing from the past to create a future; we stand on the shoulders of who came before us, and we are just trying to take it forward and make it more relevant to the times that we live in.” By focusing on hyperlocal ingredients, traditional techniques, and sustainable sourcing, culinary leaders are showing that food can be both deeply rooted and boldly experimental. The journey is not about going back; it is about moving forward—one indigenous ingredient, one lost recipe, one forgotten technique at a time.