The ever growing food industry is setting trends day by day. The new game in the industry which is evolving aggressively is food trends. Who sets the trend? Is it the restaurateur or the customer?
The Drinks
Most of the restaurants are turning into lounges and pubs to address the need of the hour which is drinking culture. “A restaurant is not a pub and essentially food should be the highlight of a restaurant. On the other hand, what has happened today is youth is more into drinking and that is why liquor sells the most. So the top selling item on the menu is liquor instead of food,” avers Chef Milind Sovani, Celebrity Chef & Entrepreneur.
The Basics
Change is the only thing constant and trends will keep evolving. The only thing which will stay same is basic. “India is learning new stuff but without forgetting basics and classics. Those basics and classics are changing and evolving every day. They are more 2017 and improvised. Trend is something which constantly keeps one updating,” says Chef Rakhee Vaswani, Celebrity Chef Entrepreneur.
Set the Trend
Sky is the limit for setting trends. Anyone can set trend if he/she wants to and to put India into limelight one should take a stand to set new trends. “I wish everyone could turn their passion into making money. In food industry, whole trend is moving towards what you’re putting into your body. For example, if the food is processed or organic. Before bringing Safe & Saffron to existence, we travelled a lot from Leh Ladakh to Puducherry we done all our sourcing organically. The trend we have chosen is to give back to the ecosystem and I think that is what trending; giving back to the community,” says Aditi Dugar, Director at Safe & Saffron. Letting Chef doing their own things with the products available from Indian land would help promoting Indian cuisine and also would give back to the farmers.
Everything evolves with time same as food. There is no harm in experimenting with ingredients and food. If Chefs try new dishes just for the heck of it then there is no point doing that but if they are doing it passionately and outcome is lip smacking then there is no point stopping it because that is how food evolves. When we didn’t remain as old as our ancestors were then why should food remain that way?
The Fusion
Trend is about fusion as well. “I personally do a lot of fusions as per the demand of consumer so there is nothing wrong with fusion. It’s like a marriage which has to work, it should not reach to divorce,” adds Rakhee. Fusion goes wrong when an Indian Chef tries to do an Indian dish with Italian influence but if you don’t understand Italian well than how can you do a fusion with Italian influence. Thus the Chef has to be good at both the cuisines to give that fusion a shot.
The Respect
Respecting food and our own cuisine is one of the imperative factors. India produces two and a half times of grains that it needs currently to feed its own population and yet people are growing hungry. There is a huge issue towards the respectability of food, respecting country’s own produce and using it in the correct way. Those are the things should probably look as trends today.
