India’s 2025 Food Bingo: Kunafa Kulfi, Swicy Chips & Oreo Pakoras

Scroll back through your 2025 feeds and it becomes hard to tell where dessert ends and dare begins.

- ‘TDG NETWORK

Vodka pani puri, served as party shots in metro bars.

One week, everyone is cracking into kunafa cheesecake jars; thenext, somebody is stuffing vodka into pani puri shells or frying Oreos in besan.

This was the year Indian food went fully “bingoboard”: part genuinely delicious, part purespectacle,all designed to make you pause mid-scroll. Recent roundups of viral trends talk about Middle Eastern desserts going desi, a full-blown swicy (sweet-plus-spicy)explosion, cloud coffees and anostalgia-driven mithai glow-up. Another list of"most bizarre” Indian food combos reads like a challenge menu: chocolate Maggi, icecreamwith achar, vodka pani puri, Oreo pakoras, Fanta noodles, jalebi with rabdi and samosa, and the now-infamous fire pan. Imagineall ofthisasa5x5 Food Bingo grid. Chances are, you havealreadly checked offmore boxes than you realize.

‘The first big square belongs to kunafa. A few years ago, most Indians had only seen it in travel vlogs from Dubai. By 2025, theshredded phyllo pastry filled with stretchy cheese and sugar syrup had been thoroughly domesticated. Cafes leaned into ku-nafa cheesecakes, kunafa croissants, kunafa milk cakes and festival boxes of kunafa-inspired pastries.

On social media, the real hook was textural drama: the crackle of baked strands giving way to molten filling, filmed in slow motion. For a generation raised on ASMR, that crunchy-pull-apart moment became as important as taste. In some cities, kulfi parloursand chai tapris added their own spin, pairing creamy kulfi or thick milky chai witha kunafa-style crust. It did not always work, but that wasbeside the point. Halfthethrill wasinwatching someone attemptit.

Another row on the bingo card belongs to swicy. Global menus coined the term; India took it very personally.