New passage to India: a handful of Indian chefs have embarked on a journey to redefine and modernize their complex native cuisine

Prepared Foods, Jan, 2004 by Brad A. Johnson

Much to the dismay, no doubt, of pub owners throughout London, a chicken dish has dethroned fish and chips as the city's single-most popular restaurant meal. A recent study there revealed that the new collective favorite in London restaurants is none other than chicken tikka masala, that rich Indian comfort food served at Indian restaurants everywhere.

Tikka is the Hindi word for cutlets, or pieces; masala, the word for spices. Some food historians claim it is a London invention, while others believe it could be a Mogul recipe dating to the 18th century. Regardless, chicken tikka masala has become the one dish by which every Indian restaurant is ultimately measured, and it can range from a rich, tomato-based curry with a perplexing orange color to a light, buttery stew the simple color of cream.

The tikka masala coup doesn't come as a huge surprise, really. Going out for a curry has long been a favorite British pastime. And London has firmly established itself as the culinary epicenter of contemporary Indian cuisine. The colonial relationship between the two countries has hastened the cultural exchange. Immigrants from India have become Britain's largest minority. As a result, the British restaurant industry has long since championed India's narrowly defined micro-cuisines such as Moghlai, South Indian, Gujarati, Hyderabadi, Jewish-Cochini, Bengali, Goan, Chettinand, Punjap, Madras or Parsi.

By comparison, India's fine restaurants are driven by tourists, not locals. The majority of India's people do not dine in restaurants, and those who do typically eat Chinese or French food for a change of pace from the home kitchen. And for Indians in one region to embrace the cuisine of another is rare, since their cuisines are so deeply rooted in specific cultural mores and religious traditions.

Thus, understanding the intricacies of India's many micro-regional and religious dining habits takes decades, not years, of study to fully master. After reading numerous articles and cookbooks and eating at countless regional Indian restaurants, I am more confused than ever about what differentiates a Gujarati dish, for example, from a Parsi one. And for every restaurant in London that specializes in one Indian micro-cuisine, there are a dozen more that more closely resemble the ones in America, which focus on the generic division between North and South. (The North being where tandoori cooking and most common dishes come from; the South being mostly vegetarian.)

Breaking Ranks

Most chefs still don't dabble in Indian cuisine because they don't realize it can be anything other than chunks of meat in a spicy gravy or skewered pieces of chicken cooked in a special clay oven that they will never own. And until recently, no one had dared take Indian cuisine out of its downscale, traditional ethnic capsule and move it onto the larger culinary stage.

But that's exactly what a few very savvy chefs and restaurateurs are beginning to do--and with tremendous success. It is an evolutional process no different than earlier ones that catapulted Italian and Japanese cuisines into the American vernacular. This new movement is modernizing Indian food with current kitchen trends and universal culinary techniques.

The leading proponent of this movement is Vineet Bhatia, who rose to culinary fame at London's Star of India, a cramped restaurant in the residential neighborhood of South Kensington, a few blocks north of Buckingham Palace.

"There is a misconception still, even in London, that an Indian meal has to be kebabs and a curry," says Bhatia, a Bombay native who formerly headed the kitchens at various Oberoi hotels--India's answer to the Ritz-Carlton.

Bhatia's food is nothing short of an epiphany--pure, clear, easy to understand. Instead of oddly bright-red chicken presented with yogurt sauce, his rotisserie-style bird is served with a bright, cilantro-chile dressing. Instead of chunks of lamb stewed in a rich, thick gravy, his lamb chops are frenched, with a mint and mango chutney for slathering.

Only a handful of restaurants in the United States are beginning to approach the cuisine with similar cunning. One is Tabla, the Manhattan partnership between Danny Meyer (Grammercy Tavern, Union Square Cafe) and Bombay-born-and-trained Floyd Cardoz. Another is Los Angeles' Tantra, for which Bhatia is a consulting chef.

Some food critics have accused these restaurants of further muddying the already complicated conventions of Indian cuisine. But these chefs have arguably hit on something that could unlock a palette of flavors for restaurants of all stripes, Indian or not. A dish borrowed from India's new wave could quite easily become the chicken tikka masala of the American foodservice industry.

New World Order

After Bhatia left Star of India, he opened the elegant Zaika, one of only two Indian restaurants in the world to earn a coveted Michelin star (the other being the much-studied restaurant in London's Mayfair called Tamarind).

Bhatia has defined modern Indian cuisine as a fragile, but entirely valid, marriage of classical techniques--French, Italian, even Japanese--with traditional Indian flavors. And though he does serve a few classic curries inspired by regional traditions, it is his more experimental side that is getting attention.