‘This is the best time to be a chef cooking Indian food’

Himanshu Saini’s book celebrates progressive Indian cooking, rooted in his culinary philosophy and personal journey

- Himanshu Saini

During one of my travels abroad to cook with other chefs, the long hours didn’t leave me much time to dine around, so I ate in the immediate area.

This experience encapsulated not only the state of Indian food today, but also its position versus other globally renowned cuisines outside of their home countries.

Most restaurants felt self-assured with expansive dining rooms and swarms of staff. The food tasted fresh with personality and perspective. A Greek restaurant was a palatial hive of activity—enormous floorspace with possibly twenty people on staff. The adjacent Italian restaurant was even larger, with about thirty staff.

Our experience with the Indian restaurants was mixed. This saddens me, as there is nothing like a plate of home when you are away from home. One Indian restaurant was a well-known and lauded international brand where the food sang with vibrancy and spoke of a confident kitchen. The other was a local Indian restaurant—ten staff maximum—where, being polite, the experience was lacklustre, from the ingredient quality to the disengaged service.

Indian food is at a crossroads. The excitement around Indian cuisine is palpable. Compromising on our cuisine right now is to compromise on our trajectory. My call to action is to stay the course and set a north star of consensus that Indian food is one of the finest, most exciting cuisines in the world. This is one of our missions at Trésind Studio: to help set the pace.