How Food Menu at Restaurants have changed in last 2-3 years

The food scene in India has evolved in more ways than one. Chefs today are more aware of local ingredients, the versatility with which ingredients can be cooked, complex yet amazing flavour profiles etc. There’s so much happening even in the farm-to-table space where chefs have finally taken to learning/understanding how the vegetables/fruits are grown, how poultry/meat is reared, how the dairy products are made, etc! which is also helping chefs largely to create original, no-nonsense dishes making each dish a hero in its own sense!

Chefs have started travelling extensively in the last 4/5 years to get first-hand experience of the authenticity of that particular cuisine or dish so as to come back to their respective cities to try and replicate it with locally available ingredients and their personal chef touches to it! It’s become so important for chefs to explore and eat authentic food in that particular region /location where it comes from to maintain the originality of the food!

I also feel today chefs of the industry have this mutual respect for each other’s work and food wherein we see so many chefs might be these days or a group of chefs eating at a fellow chef’s restaurant very often so as to eat and appreciate all the hard work each one of us is doing!

From the customer’s point of view -:

As opposed to 8/10 years back when the customer would go out and eat/drink only in a celebratory manner, Today the customer has made going out a part of their day-to-day lifestyle! It’s not only about the birthdays or anniversaries anymore, customers today do go out 2/3 times weekly to try different restaurants different cuisines, mocktails, and cocktails and experience going out unlike earlier! People are open to trying new foods today, as a chef I’m very happy that we have many enthusiastic eaters now willing to try what the chef has put on a plate rather than changing dishes and Laing them boring to suit themselves! What’s helped is the number of travel people do these days wherein they travel to Europe, America, Africa, Asian countries and when they come back here, they do identify me relate to some cuisines/dishes that they’ve had abroad! As a chef, it really helps us push ourselves each day to imagine, re-imagine Indian/international classics in our own ways and put them on a plate because people are willing to try flavours/ingredients/dishes unknown to them!