UNSUNG HEROES OF YOUR MENU

Over the last year or so, more restaurants have been branding themselves as ingredient-first. But isn't all food ingredientfocused? What does the concept essentially mean? Top chefs help us separate facts from fads

- SAMREEN TUNGEKAR

Oddly seven years ago, calling a menu regional and seasonal was the latest cool trend. Of course, many of these menus were genuinely curated seasonally to honour the conversation around sustainability as well as reduce carbon footprint. However, regional and seasonal soon succeeded to making the humble ingredient the hero of a menu, and before we knew it, the ingredient-forward concept was driving restaurant marketing almost as swiftly as the pineapple-on-pizza debate.

The point, however, is not to look down on how trends in the culinary world change, or call a concept a ‘buzzword’. Rather, we set out to speak to chefs, ingredient suppliers, and experts to understand the ingredient-forward phenomenon so that consumers can see beyond marketing techniques to make their choices.

DEFINE IT, PLEASE 

“You let the ingredient or a singular part of a dish shine, without muddying it with all kinds of complications or components fighting for attention on a plate. If I’m doing a fish, for example, I want the fish to shine without things that’ll take away from its flavour. At my new restaurant, LUPA, that’s really what we’re aspiring to do,” explains chef Manu Chandra, when asked how he defines the idea.

The Bombay Canteen was one of the first restaurants to curate their menus on a seasonal basis, and executive chef Hussain Shahzad feels extracting the right flavour and character of an ingredient is respecting it. “When you complicate it too much, it takes away from the ingredient. Showcasing the ingredient in its true form is what’s ingredient-forward to me,” he says.