WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Foraging in India is about more than just creativity; for chefs, it's about learning from communities and their cultures, as Diya Kohli finds out

- Diya Kohli

A trip to a remote fishing village in Thoothukudi to source sea urchins changed chef Varun Totlani's notion of how locals hunt for their seafood. "We wanted sea urchins and had seen videos of people diving in with fancy equipment and scuba gear. Here, the men just jumped into the sea to pluck sea urchins with their bare hands.

They didn't even have goggles, and yet, they looked like they were having the time of their lives. And so we followed," says Totlani, head chef of Mumbai's Masque, which offers seasonal tasting menus with hyperlocal ingredients from across India. "All around us in the water there were starfish and puffer fishsupposedly very poisonous. But we followed the cues of our fishermen and these creatures remained 'bystanders' while we hunted for sea urchins," he says.

While the term foraging has been largely appropriated by Nordic fine dining, in India, away from the cities, it is synonymous with food that's on the table, a tradition as old as the land itself.

A far cry from the Instagram reels of Scandi chefs scraping lichen off rocks in their backyards, foraging in India is not for beginners and is not always glamorous. But, armed with an open mind, a hungry belly [and some antihistamines], chefs are leaving the Noma manuals behind.

"Here, it is very different. In the mountains, for example, the forests give you food," says Prateek Sadhu, chef and owner of Naar, a 16-seater fine-dining restaurant near Kasauli in Himachal Pradesh, which showcases the culinary traditions of the hills.