Rude Food: The game changers
With so many sophisticated restaurants that recreate the world experience opening here, India is changing very quickly. It was while they were showing me to my table at Madras’ The Flying Elephant, that the...Vir Sanghvi writes.
It was while they were showing me to my table at Madras’ The Flying Elephant, that the thought struck me: has anyone noticed how much restaurants seem to be changing in India? The Flying Elephant is probably a breakthrough for restaurants in India – more about that later – but the magnificence of its conception is just one more example of how Indian hoteliers and restaurateurs are throwing away all the stereotypes and opening restaurants that are much more dramatic than ever before.
The changes manifest themselves in several ways: décor, cuisine, ambience, ambition and size. There were, broadly, two stages in the development of restaurants in India. In the first stage, the best restaurants tended to be located outside of hotels. Each city had its own restaurant district: Bombay’s Churchgate Street, Delhi’s Connaught Place, Calcutta’s Park Street etc., and the bulk of the restaurants were either Chinese (sort of Cantonese, in that era) or multi-cuisine (lots of Punjabi-type food plus what passed for basic Continental) – the sort of cuisine epitomised by Gaylord, Sky Room and other such Sixties hotspots.
Catch your daily dose of Fashion, Health, Festivals, Travel, Relationship, Recipe and all the other Latest Lifestyle News on Hindustan Times Website and APPs.