Chefs are being offaly nice on their menus

Bengali mothers are adept at coaxing their children into eating every part of the fish.

- Rituparna Roy

Bengali mothers are adept at coaxing their children into eating every part of the fish. "Chew the heads, they're good for you", "eat the tel (innards), they are delicious", "don't discard the skins, they have good fats", and so on. "My mother cooks macher tel like a mishmash with vegetables, and it's something I cannot have enough of even today," says head chef Avinandan Kundu, who reimagines his mother's recipe in the form of dolma, the stuffed leaf parcels believed to have originated during the Ottoman times, at Sienna in Kolkata. The restaurant, known for its playful approach to Bengal's diverse food culture, offers small plates and bar bites featuring fish and meat offal.

Borne out of necessity, nose-to-tail eating as a culinary practice traces its roots to ancient civilizations. In India, it is prevalent across various communities with home cooks displaying their ingenuity via recipes passed down through generations. While offal is treated as a delicacy among many cultures, it often gets a bad rap here, primarily because of taste, texture and cultural stigma. The dishes and their fascinating stories are now inspiring chefs to reinterpret them for the modern diner, be it from memory or research trips across the country.

In Mumbai, chef Varun Totlani makes a bone marrow dish spiced with fiery thecha at the cocktail bar Paradox. The theatrics involve guests scooping the marrow out of a buff shank bone that has been cut length-wise. "While bheja is more acceptable because of its creamy texture, offal or organ meats as a category require a fair amount of work in fine dining," he says.