From Village to Plate: How India’s culinary scene is embracing and reinventing rural flavors – Lifestyle News

By Nikhil Merchant

Having travelled to many villages during a stint with an NGO certifying farmers for fair trade in India, I encountered some true local food—from a Ghavti Murgh in Solapur, Maharashtra, where whole chickens, rubbed with a coarse paste, are roasted for the entire village to share, to a rustic coconut vegetable stew called Ishtu, paired with soft, spongy fermented appams on a farm in Wayanad, Kerala. 

Today, it’s fascinating to witness how chefs across the country are using this palette, introducing rural flavours to diners in innovative ways.

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A quest for more such discoveries led me to Naar, chef Prateek Sadhu’s dream project perched on a hillock in Kasauli, Himachal Pradesh. The restaurant embodies cross-cultural influences of the Himalayas, and weaves Sadhu’s personal experiences gathered from his travels.

At an airy cottage, with wood hewn accents, suspended pots and pans, complete with a rustic, open fireplace—the meal unfolded over a leisurely four hours. Sadhu’s approach to food is deeply introspective, drawing from his encounters with people and their unique culinary traditions. “When I travel, there are so many stories that I get to know, and through those stories, I learn more about their food culture,” he reflects. 

Urban dining has increasingly embraced the complexities of rural cooking—be it styles or techniques—a welcome change in our current dining culture.

Tradition with a twist

Fine-dining concepts in major cities are flourishing and redefining haute cuisine. These venues not only share vivid tales of travels but also reinterpret them into refined dishes that connect deeply with diners. 

At Avatara, Mumbai’s fine-dining gem from Dubai, executive chef Rahul Rana presents an ambitious vegetarian concept through a meticulously crafted 10-course meal—intriguing even those hesitant to embrace an all-vegetarian experience. One of his dishes, Grinjanah, features turnip kebabs and rajma nihari atop flaky Kashmiri katlam bread, inspired by a Kashmiri Pandit team member’s suggestion during a team meeting. 

“As a chef, I view rural cooking as a treasure trove of traditional techniques which are gaining popularity through culinary tourism, media exposure, and their adaptation in modern kitchens,” says Rana while exploring the ‘khad’ technique, an age-old Rajasthani underground cooking method, using clay and earth as cooking mediums. 

Chef Niyati Rao, founder of south Mumbai restaurant Ekaa, methodically enables her select ingredients—her Himalayan trout dish, wrapped in clay and cooked with a six-herb paste preserves the purity of rural cooking techniques, reminiscent of the slow-cooked meals she observed on her farm in Dahanu. “Rural cooking allows ingredients and techniques ample time to develop complex flavours,” Rao explains, highlighting how clay-wrapping is akin to modern sous vide.  

It’s not just the fine-dining restaurants in metropolitan cities embracing these traditions. In Pune’s Aragma, Poornima Somayaji’s inventive dishes take a ride through central India. In a city where course meal concepts face challenges due to a conservative dining culture, she has succeeded in capturing a discerning audience by showcasing distinct village cooking from Maharashtra—drawing inspiration from regions like Solapur and Vidarbha.

Somayaji laments how modern gas and metal vessels have diluted the flavours of traditional methods like earthenware, charcoal and khad. A dessert influenced by a visit to a tribal village near a national forest is her star dish. On tasting a sweet stuffed flatbread made with dried mahua tree fruits, which symbolises life with the local tribes, she recreated a delicate mahua mousse paired with banana walnut bread and passion fruit, capturing refinement thoroughly. 

An ingredient-focused approach paired with traditional techniques allows chefs to explore and introduce new flavours, with wild foods gaining particular attention. 

The Wild Food Festival, celebrating the indigenous produce of Maharashtra’s Sahyadri mountains, exemplifies this movement. Founded by Shailesh Awate and Shikha Kangsagara of OOO Farms, in partnership with chef Thomas Zacharias of The Locavore, the festival has, for the past two years, collaborated with institutions like Don Bosco and Rizvi College of Hotel Management to create an immersive event. The festival showcases Maharashtra’s tribal produce with displays of foraged wild vegetables, tastings of over 40 monsoon wild vegetable dishes, and a dinner buffet featuring wild foods.

Culinary innovation

Hotels across India have long been the torchbearers for introducing hyper-local cuisines. With their extensive kitchens, large restaurant spaces and diverse clientele, hotels are uniquely positioned to explore varied culinary concepts, unlike standalone eateries, which often adhere to a single concept.

Goa, once focused narrowly on its own local cuisine, is witnessing a subtle transformation in its hotel dining scene. This is all due to a growing demand from both Indian and international guests for more diverse and traditional experiences.

Chef Somnath Rakesh at Taj Holiday Village Resort & Spa and chef Divyanshi Patel at The Astor Goa, both chefs from different regions, share a deep connection to their roots. Chef Rakesh, inspired by the rustic, slow-cooked Champaran mutton he discovered in small village markets of Champaran, Bihar, has reimagined this dish in a refined avatar, offering a rare find in a city dominated by seafood and Portuguese influences. 

Similarly, chef Patel draws from her childhood in Baghelkhand where cooking over cow dung charcoal, a common cooking medium in most tribal and rural homes, reminded her of smoky rotis—its simplicity leaving a lasting impression.

A dal bhari poori recipe from her childhood has been transformed into a lentil taco with mango salsa and she also reimagines kumdha vadi, a high-protein fritter from her region, into a version of baba ganoush, blending it with roasted aubergine and tahini, to create a nutritious spread. 

The chefs’ approaches highlight a common belief—innovation does not require abandoning tradition but understanding it deeply. Chef Tushar Malkani at The Yellow House, Goa, explains, “Tribal diets are deeply rooted in nature. They focus on local fish, crabs and snails, consumed for personal use rather than commercial purposes. 

This approach supports sustainable living by minimising waste.” Unlike mainstream diets, which may exclude these unconventional ingredients, these ingredients are well known for nutritional and medicinal benefits.

His tribal inspired bongulu chicken from the Araku Valley where meat is traditionally cooked in hollow bamboos, rendering unique smoky notes is a favourite, as is a chapda chutney, a Chhattisgarh delicacy made from red ants and their eggs, both showcasing indigenous practices. Malkani collaborates with OOO Farms and the Indian Institute of Millets in Hyderabad for sustainable ingredients. 

Initiatives like Hyatt Loves Local are veritable commitments by brands to retain authenticity by tweaking and adapting new techniques to locally available ingredients. Chef Shibendu Ray Chaudhury, executive chef at Hyatt Regency, Jaipur Mansarovar, adapts this at Shrot, an Indian cuisine-focused restaurant. His menu includes the micro-regional Pratapdhan chicken curry, featuring free-range, red-hued chicken from Udaipur, slow-cooked to enhance its umami flavours with homemade spices. The Thikri ki Dal, a traditional Rajasthani dish, is cooked in earthen pots, where any waste cracked pots are thrown into the bubbling pot, infusing the dal with a distinctive flavour. Going further east, Chef Avisek Bagchi at JW Marriott, Kolkata, adapted the technique he observed in Kerala’s coast—Keen Pillichathu, fish cooked in banana leaves—into his Kasundi Bhetki Leaf Cartouc, a fun twist to a classic recipe. 

Hotels in smaller towns often introduce local cuisines effortlessly, and larger cities are now drawing inspiration from these establishments. As hotel brands operate across both areas, staff exchanges enrich culinary knowledge, with chefs incorporating flavours and techniques from their diverse teams’ hometowns, bridging the gap between rural and urban traditions.

Back to the roots

The Wild Food Festival is raising awareness of tribal ingredients, and in August, The Locavore and OOO Farms partnered with restaurants across Mumbai and Pune to bring wild foods to urban menus. Limited edition dishes like Maska Bakery’s Mahua Cinnamon Roll, Folk’s Wild Folk Thali, and Woodside Inn’s Indian Thorny Bamboo Shoot Cutlets with Egusi Sauce showcase the creative potential of these ingredients, adding diversity to the dining experience through education.

Sourcing is crucial in bringing rural flavours to standalone concepts. Chef Sombir Chaudary of Soka in Bengaluru works closely with local suppliers, forging partnerships with community partners to secure fresh ingredients. He sources malai paneer from Rattiram Paneer and homemade masalas from Qureshi Masala Wala in Lucknow for his galouti kebab and lamb shank nihari. Similarly, chef Ali Akbar of Slink and Bardot in Mumbai sources rare ingredients like dalle khursani chillies from Sikkim through personal connections.

The ease of sourcing rural ingredients has encouraged many city chefs to tweak their menus. In Goa, executive chef Abhishek Deshmane of Slow Tide incorporates slow cooking and pickling techniques to create flavour-packed comfort meals. His globally inspired menu features dishes like Pollo Asado and Lisbon Grilled Pork Loin, alongside Aloni Bhaat and Kaala Mutton, inspired by his childhood memories in Shirwal village, Maharashtra.

In Pune, chef Abhishek Joshi of We Idliwale Barroom emphasises the nature of rural cooking. He describes it as “more honest, more community-driven and all about what’s available in abundance and what’s scarce.” His menu features dishes inspired by south Indian street food, such as Trichy Style Bheja Fry, made on a plancha, and Dindigul Mutton Biryani, cooked in a pressure cooker at a friend’s place in Chennai.

Regionally inspired concepts like Folk and Mool Kitchen in Mumbai bring a wide variety of regional culinary experiences under one roof. Folk, run by Kashmiri home chef Jasleen Marwah, features dishes from across India, including Kashmir, Konkan and Punjab. 

Brand chef Sarvesh Moudgill of Mool incorporates local chefs’ input and his own food-related travel experiences into the menu. A memorable trip to Uttarakhand led him to learn how to handle and cook wild nettle leaves, known locally as Bicchoo Booti, from Nirmala Devi, a tribal woman from Lohaghat. This dish, along with others like Bafla from Madhya Pradesh, showcases the breadth of regional cuisine.

Entrepreneurs like Gauri Devidayal of Magazine St Kitchen in Mumbai are also promoting rural cooking by providing a platform for experimental chefs, including home chefs. During the Covid-19 lockdown, the kitchen shifted its focus to hosting Indian chefs, reviving long-lost family recipes — from Mangalore’s Shriya Shetty to Bengaluru’s Divya Prabhakar. Chefs like Sadaf Hussain and Marina Balakrishnan have also brought regional flavours to the forefront, with pop-ups showcasing Bihari, Pathare Prabhu and Thalassery cuisines.

It’s all in the details

Chef Radhika Khandelwal of Fig & Maple in New Delhi offers a fresh perspective. “Honestly, for me, authenticity is overrated. My focus is on flavour, learning, and discovering new ingredients rather than adhering to a strict definition of authenticity,” she says. Her summer menu features dishes like Aloe Vera Labneh, inspired by her stop in Fatehpur, where she tasted gwarpatha ki sabzi for the first time, and lasude ka achar, served with jackfruit kebabs, drawn from her experience in Dosa, Rajasthan, where she first tried gumberry sabzi. 

“Textures are equally important, when reinterpreting dishes”, says chef Ebaani Tewari of Kari Apla in Mumbai, who runs the restaurant with her husband Mathew Varghese. She illustrates this with her adaptation of chicken kharda from Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region. Known for its fiery heat from using thecha, a Maharashtrian chili garlic chutney, she adapts it to suit the suburban Mumbai palate by creating a coarser texture with milder spices. This makes it easier to scoop up with coconut and rice bhakris. 

Rural cooking is not just about inspirational dishes; it’s about evolving a dish to meet new demands, finding textures, and matching flavour profiles with global ingredients. Chef Ali Akbar of Slink & Bardot in Mumbai highlights the evolving perception of rural food: “Our attitude towards it is evolving. We city people don’t eat what we used to in smaller towns and villages. It was uncool to eat millets and local vegetables till incomes grew and social media trends started defining what we should be eating.” His dishes incorporate local ingredients like Meghalaya’s fermented soybean, tungrymbai, as a substitute for Japanese miso.

The exploration of rural cooking techniques and ingredients in urban kitchens is here to stay. Chef Khandelwal says, “It’s about creating dishes that are delicious and meaningful, rather than trying to replicate something ‘authentic’ by rigid standards.” Rural cooking nowadays is not just a relic of the past but a vital part of the present and future culinary innovations.

Nikhil Merchant is a Mumbai-born food and beverage expert, consultant and writer.

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