Is Indian food ready for the global bow?

From pots and pans to aping Indian cuisine overseas their debate stirred several issues A certifying body is needed First of all Indian cuisine is underplayed in our own country If you look around even in this city 80 of new restaurants are not Indian When it comes to this cuisine overseas yoursquoll see different versions of perhaps not Indian but Pakistani or Bangladeshi cooking thoroughbred Indian cuisine restaurants donrsquot exist anywhere in that format Moshe Shek owner of the chain of restaurants Moshersquos file pic NonIndians who open these restaurants fuse the Indian cuisine in various ways It will be good to form a national body that will represent India by certifying specific restaurants that are actually serving authentic Indian cuisine The Japanese have earned it They donrsquot change or shift their cuisine but maintain identical standards You will get versions of Japanese food but you wonrsquot come across restaurants serving French fusion Japanese or Japanese food from Malaysia I wonder how proud are we of Indian food How many Indian restaurants in the city are of good standard Most nonIndians drop by restaurants like Khyber How is it possible that our city has just one restaurant dedicated to Indian food for foreign tourists Nobody talks about developing the local cuisines of Maharashtra Why canrsquot we open upscale restaurants of that nature Like the French or Japanese do If we take pride in our countryrsquos cuisine I am sure we will get there The mother of all food I remember the day I was about to open Junoon restaurant in New York and I had to pick the main show plate My manager kept on suggesting brass plates but I wanted the Michelinstar show plate which was white with a golden rim You see in Indian restaurants people donrsquot appreciate Indian elements If you look at the world food history ours is one of the oldest In the last five years not a single Japanese restaurant has opened in New York and only one in eight major French restaurant is to be seen Michelinstarred chef Vikas Khanna The beauty of our cuisine is that it is not stagnant No cuisine speaks so much about a journey for it was the spices that led America to be discovered In 10 years Indian cuisine has become the frontrunner in the US We have Arab Portuguese and French mdash every kind of characteristic in ours Our heritage is fantastic at home The best Indian cuisine is at home that cannot be rivalled by any restaurant The influx of chefs going abroad to study and coming here is a healthy trend and this exchange will help in the growth and recognition of Indian cuisine Protect our lsquograndfather cuisinesrsquo It is true that we have rich diverse Indian cuisines coming But you have to be careful while labelling it as Indian Is it only heavy Mughlai Punjabi food Japanese cuisine is very distinct but we have Bengali Lucknowi Mangalorean Maharashtrian and so many others Our food needs to be taken to places and accord status where it doesnrsquot get diluted Japan is highly developed but here ironically with our poverty traditional methods arenrsquot dying out in any way Restaurateur Rahul Akerkar owner of Indigo restuarants across the city and Neel restaurant PicBipin Kokate We have so many lsquograndfather cuisinesrsquo such as Awadhi of which perhaps Punjabi is an offshoot where we have adapted the tandoor as a way of cooking But we need to push our cuisines now excite palates of diners The problem in India is that it has stayed stagnant and there is this great belief about authenticity In 1993ndashrsquo94 I went to the first All India Chef Congress where the debate was about how Indian food was getting bastardised by Bangladeshi cooks in London where the chat was about standardised recipes But I had to tell them that nobody standardises recipes The beauty of food is in diversity not homogeneity Why need external approval If you look at the top 10 cuisines in the world India does fit in there But yoursquove got other cuisines like Thai Japanese Mexican Italian French and Chinese I am surprised that Chinese in not there in the UNESCO heritage list Chinese is more popular around the world At this point Indian cuisine is very strong India has many different regions I donrsquot believe that countries or people can influence our cuisine to that extent Nikhil Chib owner and executive chef of Busaba Restaurant file pic Indian cuisine be it in the South in Bengal and in North India doesnrsquot seem to be getting affected Why do we need an external agency to label it to declare that this is how the cuisine is made or this is the way itrsquos documented It is popular around the world and it has different interpretations If London wants to make Chicken Tikka Masala in a certain way that pleases English palates mdash thatrsquos fine I donrsquot think a cuisine should be limited to be cooked in a particular way Todayrsquos world is constantly changing and so is the customer people prefer it in different forms Personally I like my food the way it is But for the world I donrsquot see that I see they want innovation and experimentation Blessed but hardly documented Therersquos 100 depth in Indian food especially when compared to the French Irsquove been around Rajasthan Srinagar Himachal and Punjab mdash and there are so many cuisines to discover All of our utensils being natural our cuisine also uses natural means of cooking In all recipes nobody has ever described the flame and how to contain it but the way we cook it there are various temperatures One knew basic things like how to take care of pots For instance in the South urli is used which is a cast that is composed of two to three metals put together to get the right temperature Executive Chef Ananda Solomon of Vivanta by Taj Presidentu00a0 The wares to make desserts and rice are different as for the former the utensil has a wider mouth but for rice itrsquos narrow So surface area has been considered since the ancient times Even objects that we used to stir food with are considered Our raw produce was organic before fertilisers came in because farmers only relied on rain and natural fertilisers Plus Indian cooking survives extreme weather and even the fact that when a wedding feast has to be cooked at least for 1000 people in the villages consistent taste is prepared Also our variety of colour is tremendous which is just not red and white Our rotis have a wide range we must be having at least 20 to 25 kinds of rice and with our lentils pulses fruits and vegetables mdash we are a blessed country Unfortunately our cooking is not welldocumented in a structured manner