Today's special: Fresh ideas

Fine dining sometimes costs the earth. It doesn’t have to exploit it too. See how four chefs are minimising waste, championing local and serving seasonal at every meal

- Shirin Mehrotra

Most of India’s fancy restaurants don’t think of the Earth when they think of their menus. The salmon is Norwegian (or claims to be), the sea bass is Chilean, cured meats fly in from the Mediterranean, exotic vegetables are frozen for long periods. Meanwhile, restaurants worldwide are working out ways to reduce their carbon footprints from a mighty whomp on the planet to a light tiptoe.

Even the Michelin Guide, the holy grail of good eating, has been handing out “green stars” since 2020 to featured restaurants that use local and seasonal produce and have small eco-footprints.

India’s smaller restaurants have known for years how to maximise resources. They’ve had small, set menus, serving local and seasonal produce to diners within their communities. It’s not the kind of system that boosts creativity or turns high profits. So, city restaurants have had to forge a different path to give diners a memorable meal without cutting corners. 

See how four of them do it.

What's your waste size?
Fig & Maple, Delhi and Goa

When Radhika Khandelwal, the chef and owner of Fig & Maple, opened the restaurant in 2016, she would weigh the food waste at the end of each day to see what more she could do to take her kitchen to zero-waste.

Today, the restaurant's Delhi and Goa outposts serve dishes incorporating bits of produce that many people think are unusable. In Delhi, chips made from root vegetable skins are a bestseller. On the Goa menu, the khandvi prawns are served with a bisque made from prawn shells.