Curious Cuisine

Forget Italian or Chinese, the spotlight is firmly on niche, offbeat cuisines at food events in the city. From Khasi khana to Ethiopian fare and South American dishes, there’s plenty to sample...

For all those who like a little bit of adventure on their plate, the city seems to be throwing up a bunch of options. Now one can look beyond the basic culinary categories of continental and Chinese, Italian and Mexican to more diverse and specialised platters like, Ethiopian or from closer home, Khasi cuisine. In tune with Mumbai’s cosmopolitan demographic, a number of pop-ups are letting you sample some very niche, unconventional cuisines from around the world. These pop-ups began as one-off experimental ventures to metamorphose into something more regular and easily available. And these venues are attracting increasing numbers of curious foodies, such as the one hosted by Rebecca Ranee, who Khasi pop-up on Sunday had many patrons in attendance. Also, with food portals such as Trekurious partnering with pop up chefs to bring their events to the world, news of these niche cuisine curations is reaching a wide audience indeed.

We caught up with those who offer some of the city’s popular niche cuisine pop ups to get a better taste of their success story.

Rebecca’s Jingbam Khasi Cuisine Pop-up: More of a home-chef event, Rebecca’s first ever pop up experiment was a huge success and turned out to be a full house affair. A graduate of hotel management, who used to run a restaurant in Saudi Arabia, the pop-up, says Rebecca has now become the second innings of her career after marriage. “Coming from Shillong, the challenge was to get the ingredients that are only available there. Even for my first event, except for the chicken and the salt, everything else was sourced from my hometown. I went about it with help from this venture called Trekurious. It was by chance that I got to meet someone from the company and they invited me to conduct a pop-up after tasting my food. But I had no idea that it will be loved so much,” says Rebecca, who is swarmed with inquiries about the next pop-up.

So how is her food different from the rest Rebecca says, “The tribal folk love meat, especially beef and pork. It might be a little bland but it has a very distinct taste and flavour. What sets it apart is the quality of the meat. For chicken-based dishes we only use country chicken from the hills and even the pigs reared there have an organic diet, so they taste completely different. In the last event, some of the dishes turned out to be very popular including the smoked pork and the fermented fish chutney. Another key element is potato, which is very popular in tribal cuisine. For the platter, I also made a potato-based salad with herbs and vegetables, which was again very popular.” Now Rebecca has a system in place wherein she will be conducting a pop-up in the second week of every month. So in the coming month of July, the date has been sealed for the 11th.

Contact: ww.trekurious.com/expri--ence/jingbam-khasi-by-rebecca-ranee1

Upasana Maheshwari – South American food pop up Upasana Mahesh-wari along with Payal Bhuptani recently held a South American food pop-up in the city. The ideation and preparation took them over a month. “The ingredients required for these cuisines are not easily available in Mumbai and generally need to be searched for very carefully or ordered online. It’s vital to do that to ensure the authenticity of South American flavours. We had a variety of dishes on the menu, which we prepared all by ourselves at the restaurant’s kitchen,” says Upasana who is a nutritionist by profession. The spread had cuisines from Peru, Brazil, Argentina and Costa Rica. “We prepared dishes like Causa Rellena Tres Colores (tricolour potato mash), Gallo Pinto with Papa a la Huanciana (rice and beans dish with potatoes in cheese sauce) and desserts like Postre Chaja’ with Brazilian Brigaderio and Alfajores (peach cake with meringue served with chocolate bon bon and sandwich cookies filled with Dulce De Leche) for over 35 people at the venue,” she adds.

Contact: www.facebook.com/dontgiveafork

Ananya Banerjee’s Ethiopian fare Ananya Banerjee dons many hats. She is a painter, a food-stylist and also the author of Planet Gastronomy — 100 popular recipes from 60 countries. Currently, she is the only one in the city who offers Ethiopian food at her Sewri home. “There are no restaurants in India offering authentic Ethiopian food. In countries like the US, dishes from Tanzania, Philippines and Ethiopia have their own audience. The food from Ethiopia is not very well explored. Injera, much like an Indian uttapam makes the base along with which different types of stews are served. Generally Ethiopian food is eaten in a thal, just like the Bohri thal but at my place I prefer serving it in individual plates with stew and veggies,” she says. Ananya also holds Bengali and global feast pop-ups.

Contact: www.ananyabanerjee.com

Auroni Mookerjee – Grandma Mookerjee’s Kitchen Auroni grew up learning to cook in his grandma’s kitchen. A copywriter by day and a cook by the night, he specialises in Bengali cuisine. He started off by helping a friend with his tiffin service and ended up cooking a meal for over 200 people once. “I’m inspired by a lot of European cooking techniques and try the same with my authentic Bengali food,” Auroni says. He plans to do a total professional turnaround where he will be cooking full time and only freelance as a copywriter. He believes in keeping the authenticity of this food intact and sources ingredients like “gondhoraj” lemons from Kolkata for his Gondhoraj Martini, sausages from Goa and so on. He recently held a pop-up at a city restaurant, where Kolkata Tacos, Kosha Mangsho Tacos and deep fried anchovies were served.

Contact: grandmamookerjee@gmail.com,

Gitika’s Axomiya PokGhar: A communication professional with experience of 13 years, Gitika’s passion for cooking came to the forefront when she quit her job. What started off as a hobby then has today become a venture that serves some of the best Assamese delicacies. As someone who intermarried, what makes Gitika’s cuisine popular, according to her, is the blend of cuisines and recipes from both her own family and that of her husband’s. “My speciality is that I try to keep it as authentic as possible and my cuisine has ingredients that pique peoples’ interest such as red ant eggs or silk-worm pupae. All of them are sourced from the north-east and are completely authentic.”

Telling us about her pop up, Gitika says, “Initially it started with a passion for cooking and later on the drive behind my effort was to popularise this extremely niche cuisine. Most of the dishes such as fish with bamboo shoots or pork with bhuj jolokia are much loved by my customers because they have flavours of herbs that are not available anywhere else in the entire country.” Contact: www.gitika.me

And if you’d like a taste of authentic, traditional Maharashtrian food, including dishes that have been long forgotten, then Varsha Dangrikar is the person to go to. A home chef who was recently chosen by secretindianrecepies.com to cook for guests at the Renaissance Mumbai Convention Center hotel, Powai (as part of an initiative called RhomeSecrets Sunday brunch), she specialises in Brahmani Marathi fare. On Sunday, she dished up kadwe valachi usal prepared the Brahmani way (without onion and garlic). Varsha says, “We also have a typical jackfruit vegetable preparation from the Konkan region, which is also much loved.”