These names have bite

The kulchette, the kulcha’s cooler cousin, is on menus worldwide. It’s rare for an Indian food term to go viral. But it’s a welcome addition, and a flex for us all

- VIR SANGHVI

Do you know where the kulcha originated? If the answer is no, then relax. Nobody really does. All the usual suspects have often been cited. The kulcha may be named after a Persian biscuit, which has a similar name.

It could have been brought to India from Central Asia by the Mughals. Or it may have been created by cooks in Maharaja Ranjit Singh's kitchen.

One of these theories may be right. Or they could all be wrong. That's how it usually goes with the history of Indian food.

But do you know what a kulchette is, where it originated, and who gave it this distinctive name?

That one's easy. I can answer all of those questions.

A kulchette is a sort of small kulcha that many chefs, from the late Floyd Cardoz to Manish Mehrotra, have played around with. But the definitive version was created at an Indian restaurant called Revolver in Singapore.

Revolver turned its little kulchas into luxury dishes, shaving white truffles on them and topping them with caviar. Because neither truffle nor caviar is a traditional Indian ingredient, it invented the name kulchette to capture the more international nature of the dish, and later took its signature kulchettes to the second Revolver in Dubai, where many different kinds of kulchettes are served.

All of this information is readily available if you do a Google search for kulchette. But what Google won't tell you is who invented the name kulchette.

It was my friend Sameer Sain, who founded Revolver as a way of transforming his passion for Indian food into a high quality restaurant.