Rtn. Farhat Jamal in conversation with Pooja Dhingra (Founder, Le15 Patisserie & Packaged Foods, Author), Aditi Duggar (Director & Founder, Masque & Urban Gourmet India Pvt. Ltd.), and Gauri Devidayal (Co-founder, Food Matters Group) on Food 2.0: What the future holds

Rtn. Farhat Jamal in conversation with Pooja Dhingra (Founder, Le15 Patisserie & Packaged Foods, Author), Aditi Duggar (Director & Founder, Masque & Urban Gourmet India Pvt. Ltd.), and Gauri Devidayal (Co-founder, Food Matters Group) on Food 2.0: What the future holds

 

Rtn. Farhat Jamal: These three very remarkable women have driven change in their own inimitable way, putting India’s culinary skills on the global map, and each one has turned a food business
into a delicious success. A very quick introduction:
Gauri Devidayal is a law student-turned-tax consultant and, from that, she found a way back to Bombay to become a formidable entrepreneur and restaurateur. I can’t imagine anybody here not having eaten at The Table restaurant. I call it a magnet; a magnet for the fashion types, the industrialist types, the not-Bombay types, the south Bombay types, basically the hungry types.
In addition to that, her other offerings include Mag St. Kitchen, Mag St. Cafe, and Iktara and a podcast. Her Insta profile, by the way, says that she can’t cook but can eat. I think she needs to act like she also knows how to make people eat. So, welcome Gauri.

Next to her is this lovely dynamite, goes by the name of Pooja Dhingra. Pooja is a patisserie and a cordon bleu chef who decided to flex her creativity and meet the rising demands of Mumbai and Mumbaikars into loving all things sweet and decadent. If we all had a sweet tooth before meeting her, we now have a full blown relationship and marriage with it after. Whether it’s her tarts or her signature macarons, I don’t know anybody who has made macarons more

“I’ve seen a dramatic change in the way diners are eating out; it’s no longer special occasion-based, it’s no longer once-in-a-while; it’s becoming multiple times a week.” ~ Gauri Devidayal famous in India than Pooja. She should almost patent it.
Pooja is all of it: a judge on MasterChef India, a food entrepreneur, a celebrity, a chef, an author and she also has a podcast. I’m not then surprised that her Insta following is at 7.1 million and growing. Welcome Pooja.

And last but not the least is a friend who again was a finance girl. I don’t know what the connection is between finance that makes you hungry and takes you to the food business but Aditi Duggar is another finance girl who then decided to become a food entrepreneur, had worked at Michelin star restaurants and has put her focus on her ingredients. She is the left brain behind Masque, which as you know has comfortably been sitting on top of Asia’s 50 restaurants for many years now. She’s also turned her innovation and flair to her catering company, Sage & Saffron, to Seesaw cafe, Circle Sixty Nine, and TwentySeven Bakehouse. Gosh, I’m just hungry listening to all these things and all these numbers. Aditi, you must tell us what 27 and all those numbers are for. And, guys, the most important thing about Aditi, which she may not tell you all right now, is that she’s a mother to three boys. She does all of this and has three children. I mean, she’s nothing less than a force of nature. Welcome Aditi Duggar.
Tell me, how has the culinary landscape changed since you started your business?

Gauri: It’s been 13 years this week since we opened The Table. I’ve seen a dramatic change in the way diners are eating out; it’s no longer special occasion-based, it’s no longer once-in-a-while; it’s becoming multiple times a week. And, by eating out, I don’t just mean going out but also ordering in; of course, food deliveries have become a huge thing.

The other is being receptive to trying new things. I remember when we started The Table, a lot of the things on the menu, like the zucchini spaghetti, everyone was like: “What is that? And where’s the spaghetti?” And today, people want to see that innovation, try new things, be excited when they dine out. So, the openness to submit to a chef, but also the frequency with which people are going out is definitely a dramatic change that I’ve seen in these 13 years.

But what about the ingredients, the menu? How is that looking from the time you started? I mean… It’s been over a decade; you’ve been there 13 years.
Gauri: The Ingredient Queen can shed more light on that but, for sure, the availability of ingredients is far wider. Homegrown brands whether it’s cheeses, chocolate, all these things are being sourced locally now, I’m not just talking about produce, but of course, even meats. So it’s the whole ecosystem that has evolved in the last 10 years and it’s a whole demand-supply thing, right? There’s a restaurant opening every week if not more frequently in Bombay alone and we’ve seen how that has changed even in places like Goa and Bangalore and everywhere. It’s not just a Bombay-Delhi story anymore so the whole ecosystem has evolved. There’s enough demand from chefs which is what is making suppliers thrive.
I think the biggest thing I’ve seen is the respect for this profession. So, people who went to culinary school, which is not me again, but like Pooja, you might have more insight on this, but it was always a fall-back when you didn’t get into any other programme. Today I’ve seen kids from my alma mater which is Cathedral and a lot of other schools proactively choosing to go to culinary school after graduating. So, there’s a crazy shift in how dining out is perceived and it’s become a form of entertainment and a hobby for most people.

Aditi: I resonate with what Gauri is saying because I’ve been in the industry now for over a decade. Started out with a boutique catering company as a home business with my mom – who’s also in the audience today. And we started out as a very humble idea because I felt that vegetarian food, especially because Sage & Saffron started out as a vegetarian boutique catering company and vegetarian food at that time or creative food in general was only available in people’s homes.
Like, in homes, you would really be entertained and be able to enjoy a variety of different ingredients and preparations because people would have travelled and brought back a certain memory to represent on their tables and share those memories with family. But in a formal restaurant setting, it was almost predictable and, you know, food lacked innovation or even vegetarian food was almost like a side dish. Obviously, the whole culinary landscape has changed today. And, as Gauri mentioned, dining out is not just occasional dining or, you’re now literally planning your travels or everything your week revolves around the restaurants you want to go to, or when you want to catch up with a friend you’re looking to go to the most sought after restaurant or to even have a quick bite. Even the cafes are doing such innovative food. So, I think food has just become kind of such a long lasting memory for people that the entire culinary landscape has changed and the offerings have expanded so much.

So, Pooja, the bakery and pastry business today is about 11 billion. It’s going to go to about 22 or 1 billion in the next, by 2030 actually. That’s the kind of growth that’s predicted in India, by the way. What are your thoughts on the new trends in bakery and pastry? Like in APEC, for example, there is a demand for less sugar or sugar-free. Almost 40% of people say they want less sugar.

Pooja: People are saying that, but I got some data from Swiggy and Zomato last week that told me that the amount of people that are actually ordering things with less sugar or sugar-free is very minimal. So, I think people want to show that they are eating less sugar. Le15 will turn 14 in March this year. I think, when I started, there were no standalone pastry shops. We had Theobroma here in Colaba and that was it. The change in the bakery-pastry industries as well over the last decade or so is the number of standalone shops and the specialisation.

First, I feel like everyone needed to have menus that had a hundred items. Now you have people that are only making cookies and only making ice creams. I do see the change now shifting even the way the store experiences the packaging. No one gave that much emphasis to design or how the product was consumed. I am seeing a lot of those changes and I do agree that health and ingredients are going to be a big focus. I just don’t know how much time that will happen, but everyone is definitely moving there.

But the package food industry itself is growing according to you.
Pooja: Yes, that is the most exciting thing for us as well. We just started packaged cookies maybe a year and a half ago.
I saw it on an Air India Flight from New York.
Pooja: Yes, it is on Air India. And already in a year it is about 30% of our business; it is really scalable and for me if I get a fraction of the number that you said in the beginning, I would be very happy.
Gauri, you touched upon vegetarianism. I think the demand for vegetarian food and cooking for vegetarians in a most exhilarating and more exciting way is becoming very popular. A recent survey at a conference in Mexico showed that 22% of Mexicans wanted vegetarian food which one could never imagine. India is of course largely vegetarian. What are your thoughts on how you promote, are you seeing a more draw towards vegetarian food on your menus?

Gauri: So, it’s really interesting… you know that we are about to open a restaurant Mag Street in Bandra and the menu development there is very different from what we have in Colaba. So you can no longer look at things on a macro level because the palette and preferences change within the city itself. So, you have a much larger non-vegetarian demographic when you cross the Sealink, for example. Having said that, great produce is available locally now and with the right talent, you can do wonders with vegetarian food. So, we’ve been asked about people wanting to be more healthy as well, maybe cutting down on red meat, things like that. I’ll be honest, and especially after COVID, right, because people were trying to be more health-focussed. But I honestly haven’t seen that. Truffle fries are still the highest-selling thing on our menu. I think when people go out, they want to indulge, enjoy themselves, and are not necessarily looking to restrain what they eat. Just like Pooja said, when you’re ordering dessert, you’re not trying to be that healthy necessarily. But at home, your dining habits might be different. So, I feel like this whole idea that we’re becoming healthier… it doesn’t seem to be reflecting, at least as of now, in the eating patterns.

Also, the whole millet focus is so huge now; I think that’s the new story. Everybody talks about the growth in millet, in vegetarian food. And, people are using a variety of seeds, root vegetables and tubers. I think they’re more diverse.
Gauri: There’s definitely more discovery of indigenous ingredients, more awareness of local ingredients and experimentation with cooking with that for sure.
Aditi, your thoughts?

Aditi: For sure because Masque is totally dependent on local ingredients and local produce and the menu changes based on the season. So definitely there’s been a growth even in the kind of the service providers or the farmers or people that we can source from than when we started seven years ago. You know, there are more cocoa producers in the country. Every day I have a DM saying: “I do organic spices” or “I’m doing this really unique butter” or something. So there are so many more producers as well. And, as consumers, we’ve become very conscious.

There is a brand I’m consulting on called Araku Coffee. The whole story is a product of regenerative agriculture. We started out in Bangalore in 2021 and Bangalore in general as a community is also a very conscious community. There, we’ve seen a huge trend of people who will just be dining in Araku for breakfast, lunch, dinner because they’re such conscious eaters or they care about what they consume. So, there is definitely a shift. It’s still too early but there are definitely people who are very conscious about what they’re eating and what they’re consuming.

But, Pooja, the bakery and pastry area has a lot of demand for gluten-free. We also have a sourdough fan base now and literally everybody talks of sourdough. Are you talking about more funky and interesting flavours in your area?

Pooja: We definitely are. We have created a product called a dipkie which is a cookie which you dip in your tea and coffee, and we’ve gone with millets and jaggery and there’s no preservative. So, we are building products that reflect the way everyone is moving. I still feel indulgence is here to stay and I think when someone has a birthday or a celebration, they will still indulge in a normal cake. But day to day is where people are trying to make the switch to things that are healthier. So, we are trying to do both, but our core is still indulgence and that’s something that I don’t feel comfortable moving away from.

My next question is on global flavours. Gauri what are the new global flavours that you are seeing in restaurants like The Table, for example. Chefs are bringing their own new thinking, their own heritage and trying to combine flavours from across countries actually. Italian-Japanese flavours together, for example.

Gauri: When we started, we said we were a globally inspired menu and people asked, “No, but are you continental or are you Italian?” And we were like, “No, we’re globally inspired.” And they were like, “What does that mean?” That was 13 years ago, the idea of some chef taking inspiration from all over the world and putting their spin on a dish was a little lesser known, at least in Bombay, and there was this idea of wanting to pigeonhole into a specific cuisine.

Today I would say most restaurants are leaning this way because the kind of flexibility and freedom it gives a chef to showcase their talent, using whatever local ingredients or imported ingredients, but basically not being restricted to a specific cuisine necessarily, is the direction that I’m seeing more chefs heading into. I think that it keeps the menu fun and interesting for diners as well. Of course, there are cuisine-specific restaurants as well, and there’s room for both, but there’s definitely a growing movement towards this, a more flexible, globally inspired menu. I think it lends itself to more experimentation. The whole idea is that you want to build a loyal fan following and you want people to become regulars and to come back frequently. So, I think that trends come and go and hopefully restaurants are here to stay.

Aditi: Are people still having avocado toast?
Gauri: Yes. I tried taking it off the menu and I got lynched.
Aditi: I asked the head purchase person from the Food Hall what the ingredients were, what they sell the most, and across all the Food Halls, it was avocados. Actually, we follow a simple formula, at least with the catering, since we’re catering also to like a 2% audience, it’s called Bata: so, burrata, avocado, truffle and asparagus.

All our menus are engineered around that. But having said that, because Masque is a modern Indian restaurant, I think at least that we’ve seen that the biggest trend has been to really look inwards, and regional food has been taking the spotlight. All our research has now centred around like a festival happening in the Northeast or going to Lucknow next week during the Ayodhya festival. So, all our research is also about the regional buzz happening around the country, and that’s where we draw inspiration from.

I mean, you’re one of the few individuals possibly in this country who’s actually stood very strongly on a fixed 10-course meal. Where did you get that courage from?
Aditi: I won’t lie, it was very, very tough in the beginning. The restaurant would be empty and everybody would come saying that you’re crazy or too daring. But I think it was a little bit of being a finance person and being in equity and I had a huge risk threshold. But I kind of thought that this is… Because anyways, when you go to a restaurant, even when you go to an À la carte restaurant, you’re always asking the server, what are your top eight dishes or top 10 dishes? Frankly, at the end of the day, you’re leaving it to the chef to decide for you. So… I wanted to stick with my gut and I think that fine dining, there was a big gap in the industry and it needed an experiential diningspace and that’s where I stuck to my vision.
Fabulous, fabulous. Pooja, tell us about you, apart from your cloud kitchens that are doing very well, are you going to focus more on retail? Do we see more Le15 around the country?
Pooja: Hopefully, that’s the plan. In fact, just yesterday, we created a model that we can replicate. So, hopefully, other cities are on the cards.

So, what are the new offerings in Le15?
I can’t say yet. But it’s going to be exciting, it’s going to be different and it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Okay, all right. So, going to Gauri, you also did a programme on wines and there’s a whole focus on how we mix food and wine, food and beverages, alcoholic beverages particularly. What is it that The Table or you are doing to promote this business of putting food along with matching, so to say, wines and cocktails?
Gauri: So, someone asked me earlier how do smaller restaurants make money with the rents being what they are in Bombay? And I was like: “Alcohol.” You probably have a very different take on this, but alcohol is an integral part and it’s no longer just an accessory to the meal. It’s as important as the food that you’re having and there’s a growing importance being given to the beverage programme in a restaurant.

Restaurants today have mixologists, sommeliers, and that is a reflection of what not only the diner wants, but also where there’s the real business for a restaurant as well, right, in the sale of alcohol. What’s amazing is that alongside restaurants, bars are getting that international recognition from India. And, so, there’s as much respect for the bartender and the mixologist as there is for a chef. So, we’re definitely seeing that. I mean, even when it comes to wine, since you mentioned, again, when I look at the last sort of decade or so, the quality of wines being produced in India has improved significantly and spirits as well. The whole movement of craft spirits in India is just incredible, and it’s hardly five-seven years old as an industry, at least as far as the craft.

There’s a gin epidemic, literally.
Gauri: Exactly, gin epidemic, exactly.
There are more gins than you ever thought of.

Gauri: But you know, if I had to sum it up, this homegrown explosion that’s happening is because the consumer is now proud to have Indian homegrown brands. It’s no longer an obsession with foreign imports, and they’re very happy to be serving Indian gin and wine at home. That, to me, is a huge shift, and this is where it’s at, India’s where it’s at.

Aditi: I agree; especially from a wedding business background, everybody’s very happy serving very local, good quality spirits as well. And, also at Masque, even though it is purely a tasting menu, we see at least 60% or 70% of the audience opting for a cocktail pairing or a wine pairing, which wasn’t the norm earlier. So, you see a real shift in people being very conscious of that curation of food and beverage.
So, we’re gonna just talk about sustainability. That’s something everybody has to be very conscious of in the hotel and restaurant business. Everybody is looking at what is the new thing that we are doing to make sure we are sustainable. For example, they are talking of making chocolates not from the cocoa because it has caused a lot of deforestation. So, they are trying alternatives, where actual cocoa is not used but the flavour is the same. So, is there anything that you want to add on sustainability?
Pooja: I think what Gauri was saying earlier, right, when I moved back from Paris, for me finding ingredients was one of the hardest things. And you had to get everything imported. I think that’s the big shift now, like you’re talking about chocolate that’s, you know, made in India. You have so many different ingredients and we try to stick to as many local ingredients as we can. Price wise, it’s as competitive as what you would import. So, it’s not that you’re shifting to it just because it’s cheaper but you’re shifting to it because of the quality and sustainability and I think those are the ingredient changes that we are making.

So, on sustainability, you’re using local ingredients. And is there a higher level of consciousness in terms of our customers too?
Aditi: Right from the very beginning, if we wanted to get an indigenous lemon, the distance that we had to travel to source it, the pains that went behind the sourcing, so that consciousness came from the very beginning. We would try to use everything from the skin to the pit or between the bar and the kitchen, we would try to maintain almost like a zero waste system of where everything would be consumed and everything would be made homemade and I think that’s kind of become the DNA across all our brands. We try to be less wasteful even in our catering business where, I think, waste is inevitable when you do a wedding. I’ll just give you an idea of how we’re bringing sustainability and consciousness even to menu planning. Recently, we did a huge wedding for a thousand people. Usually, everybody stands with trays and heaps of food and most of that doesn’t get consumed because once the baraat enters, they go straight to the high tea. So, we came up with the idea of four pre-plated appetisers, including the muh meetha, on a mini tray, which would be served to every guest. And the consumption was crazy fabulous. So, it’s small shifts of understanding consumer patterns and then how you can apply it to creativity which can make a big difference to sustainability.

RAPID FIRE
One dish you wish you had invented.
Gauri: I don’t know, just eggs, I’m going to say cooking eggs, it’s a survival technique.
Pooja: I wish I’d invented croissants.
Aditi: Ice-cream.
Your favourite restaurant in India and all overseas.
Aditi: A pizzeria in Japan called Mandarin 38, it’s a pizza bar on the 38.
Pooja: Indian Accent, Delhi
Gauri: Madras Cafe.
One ingredient that you can’t do without.
Pooja: Chocolate.
The most peculiar and unusual customer anecdote.
Gauri: For that, read my book, it’s full of customer anecdotes. It’s not a recipe book, rest assured.
Aditi: Somebody who had too much alcohol and pooped on the bathroom floor.
A career high point

Gauri: Just still surviving, celebrating year 13 is a career high point.
Pooja: I started making macarons in Paris because I was inspired by a French chef. Three years ago, I had the opportunity to meet him, and he came to me, and he said, “I hear you’re making eggless macarons in India. Can you help me with the recipe?” And that for me was like… Oh, what a thing.
Aditi, your career high point.

Yeah, everyone thought that Masque would fail and now we have a huge wait list.
Pooja, one MasterChef India moment.

Lots. MasterChef moments were just discovering a lot of local regional food that I hadn’t seen or tasted before and yeah, just working alongside Chef Vikas and Ranveer was amazing.
And the last one, what would one find on the dinner table for you at home?
Aditi: Khichdi.

Pooja: Really bland, under 500 calories food, like really the nutrition part is at the dinner table.
Gauri: Toasted sourdough with butter.

ROTARIANS ASK

Do you see a vegan The Table in Bombay sooner?
Gauri: Actually, a lot of the food is naturally vegan, especially a lot of Indian food. But at least at our restaurant, I don’t necessarily see it as a focus area. Because, like I said, I think we can’t be everything to everyone. And our food uses a lot of butter…

What do you see as the future of Brand India’s food story from your lens?
Gauri: It was always North Indian cuisine that was being showcased as representative of India and today we’re seeing South Indian restaurants doing exceedingly well in New York. Regional food, like Aditi said, is going to have its moment not just in India now but overseas as well.
A lot of Indian restaurants already have a lot of vegetarian food but on the sustainable part what is it that specifically we should be looking at?

Gauri: Those who are vegetarian are largely continuing to be vegetarian. But I haven’t necessarily seen a shift for those who aren’t, who are non-vegetarian and going out to eat vegetarian food, changing that diet so to speak. But when it comes to plant based meats it’s going to be a very slow pickup in India is my personal point of view because it’s still at a very high price point and vegetarians aren’t looking for a meat-like flavour, as far as I know.

Aditi: I agree. I don’t think they’re looking for alternatives. The plant-based alternates haven’t really kicked off the way they may have in the West but definitely we see a huge rise in people choosing a vegan tasting menu even at the restaurant or people asking for vegan options across the board.
We recently did a collaboration with 11 Madison Park which is a complete plant based restaurant and the demand was huge. We could have continued doing two or three more nights and it would have been full. That was the demand, so I think there’s definitely people wanting to switch. But it’s still a slow rise, it’s still very early.