If the three secrets to great French food are butter, butter and more butter, there is enough of it on the table. The warm baguette, crisp on the outside, soft and fluffy inside, is accompanied by a generous dab of butter. Six plump escargots swim deliciously in butter and garlic. Then, there is the buttery glass of sauvignon blanc blended with semillon, a very Bordeaux-style white.
It’s a meal that can transport you to the tranquility of a Parisian bistro on a busy street. Except that the butter on table is Amul and the chaos outside is of college students and matriarchs looking for a quick bargain and gol gappas in Delhi’s Greater Kailash. Chez Jerome restaurant is just about a week old in this bustling market but it is hardly incongruous in a metro where culinary diversity is growing.
Delhi is not the only Indian city where French food is seducing customers. Smatterings of the cuisine are all around, in casual formats. From “bistronomy” in cafes to small plates in bars to choux in patisserie (not to mention macaron that has become shaadi-buffet-staple, much like sushi), restaurants serving up bites a la Francaise are found not just in the three big food cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru but even in places like Chennai and Srinagar
It’s not as if French food is new to India, a country where hotel management students carry copies of Escoffier’s Le Guide Culinaire (The Complete Guide to Modern Cookery) in translation. French food served in fancy restaurants did not mostly work in India (even Le Cirque chose to go with more Italian-style dishes than French when it opened its flagship outlet in Delhi a few years ago) and it never became pop like Italian. But a new wave of casual French and French-inspired restaurants is changing that.
“What has changed are the people. They travel more and because of social media, they are more open to new things. I coaxed a 90-year-old into trying snails recently.
Escargots or snails in garlic butter.He did and loved them,” says chef Jerome Cousin of the restaurant Chez Jerome. Cousin is an Indophile who has been cooking and serving customers at different restaurants in Chennai and Delhi for the past 15 years. He was a partner and chef at Delhi restaurant Rara Avis before it shut in 2015 over rent issues. He analyses the change in the market in the last decade. “In 2010, I opened a small bar with French food in Delhi’s Defence Colony but it was only patronised by expats. Then we opened Rara Avis in 2012, where customers were 70% expats and 30% Indians in the beginning. By the time we closed it, it had 70% Indians,” he says.
Cousin’s faith in the Indian diner’s changing palate is borne out by the fact that he has gone without a financial partner this time, putting all his savings into Chez
Jerome. “French ingredients are expensive and we operate on a 35% food cost. I want to cook the way I want to without having to listen to a partner interested only in profitability. However, I am confident the restaurant will make enough money to survive,” he says.
The last five years have seen Indian diners opening up to more culinary influences than before. Still, younger Indian diners prefer casual dining experiences even in upscale settings, as is evident from the success and failure of restaurants. This is in keeping with global trends. Even in France, the home of Michelin-star
restaurants, bistronomy (casual, bistro-style food), which is less expensive than haute cuisine, and street food are dominating the eating-out scene.
In India, having coq au vin at a fancy restaurant never became a rage even three decades ago. Now, younger chefs are attempting to break this stereotype of stuffy dining that the cuisine got stuck with.
At Mumbai’s Slink and Bardot, arguably the most successful restaurant opening in the past one year in the country, chef Alexis Gielbaum marries local ingredients and free-style referencing from other cuisines with French technique. Gielbaum used to work at Le Bistro du Parc in Delhi before he set up Slink and Bardot in partnership with Nick Harrison, who manages the restaurant, and restaurateur Riyaaz Amlani. While he feels he was earlier restricted to cooking classic bistro fare, at the Mumbai restaurant, he is free to experiment. “That is what is happening in Paris today, where the food culture is open to diverse influences. A contemporary bar-restaurant like Slink and Bardot is more Parisian in that sense,” he argues. This redefining of French gastronomy as globally more inclusive, fun and less pricey is key to its growing popularity.
“When people thought of French restaurants earlier, they thought of someone eating steak for one hour with waiters standing by the table. That is why they did not like French cuisine. Now, a plate comes to the middle of the table in a nice casual ambience; there can be a fusion of flavours; and a small plate can cost just `500-600, and `300 for vegetarian dishes,” he says. What makes Gielbaum’s food “French” despite local ingredients and a fusion of flavours is a strict adherence to techniques. Plus, he does not alter the taste of classic dishes just to suit the local palate. Boeuf bourguignon has proved to be a surprise hit with customers at Slink and Bardot, even though it is possible to argue that the restaurant’s popularity is more for the ambience than the food.
Younger chefs like Priyam Chatterjee at Delhi’s Qla are also experimenting with local ingredients while sticking to French techniques. Chatterjee works closely with fish suppliers in Kolkata, gets lamb from Pushkar and uses seasonal, local ingredients to create plates such as Bengal prawns and lobster pate and poached sea bass with coriander cream and reduced fish jus.
Cafes like Amelie’s and the cheerful L’amandier in Chennai can also be dubbed French-inspired, even as they serve a mix of European food. Their pop appeal with a younger set is a reminder that even in gastronomically conservative markets, there is actually quite a large audience ready for newer, global tastes.
Global Spotlight
With France reporting more than 10% jump in its tourism figures globally in 2017 and with the Olympics slated for 2024, the global spotlight is very much on its grande culture and cuisine. In the US, French sauces like gribiche, ravigote and vierge are finding their way even to non-French restaurants. Gougeres — rustic cheese puffs which are made by mixing choux dough with cheese — are trending, as are French cheeses like gruyere. Crème brulee featured in more than a quarter of the menus of the top 500 full-service restaurants in the US, according to Technomic’s Menu-Monitor.
Culinary trends in India often arrive via New York and Los Angeles, so we can perhaps look forward to more French influences. Already, the influence of social media as well as programmes promoted by the French government such as Good France (a day to showcase French food by letting restaurants across the world put up French menus) and Bonjour India (celebrating India-France partnership) have seen the spotlight shift to French food in India. L’Aperge chef Alain Passard has also made multiple trips to India, whetting the appetite.
“The idea that the culinary and table arts have the power to seduce and should be mastered is an idea at least as old as diplomacy itself. So what could be more
natural than to give it a new reach by opening up the treasures of French cuisine to the greatest number of people?” says Alexand re Zieg l e r, French ambassador to India, on France’s focus on cultural diplomacy through food.
For a country where food is such an important aspect of culture, it is natural that efforts to promote culture and tourism should come through dining. “For a Western traveller, exploring India through its various cuisines is an incredible invitation to travel. I’m sure the reverse is also true and the Indian public will be carried away when they discover new flavours,” says the ambassador. Another aim behind programmes like Good France is to highlight catering courses in France. “For instance, the Vatel Group has tied up with Ansal University in Delhi to impart French culinary classes. By training a new generation of Indian chefs, we are encouraging people to sample French food right here in India,” says the ambassador.
Good France (celebrated on March 21 this year) had more than 50 restaurants in India — from Karaikudi to Kolkata, from Hyderabad to Ahmedabad — putting up French menus.
Even without such promotion, restaurants, bakers and chefs are experimenting because of a growing market. “This wave of interest in cheese like brie and in sourdough bread is because younger Indians, just like Americans, are embracing French traditions and living,” says food consultant Sahil Mehta, who studied pastry-making in France before coming back to India to set up patisseries and cafes like The Artful Baker, Cravity and Café Tesu, all in Delhi.
Bread and pastry, the two cornerstones of French cooking, are the most popular ways in which the cuisine spreads. Croissants (sometimes even chicken tikka-stuffed) aside, a hipster audience seems to be embracing good breads. Sujit Sumitran, Goabased “bread whisperer”, who uses natural yeast to make sourdough breads, has been conducting packed classes in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Sumitran’s inspiration may be San Francisco, but indirectly it promotes a culture where bread is almost a religion.
Meanwhile, French patisserie is springing up in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The macaron is the most wanted. That, however, is one thing Saqib Mir, who is setting up a new café and patisserie in Srinagar, is not big on. Instead, he does everything from Paris-Brest to dainty petit fours.
Mir, who grew up in Srinagar and studied pastry-making in Paris, set up Le Delice, a very popular French-style bakery on Boulevard Road, in 2015. The bakery with about 30 products on the menu, including French-style breads, was so popular that people often travelled long distances for its products. When trouble erupted in 2016, Mir shut the bakery.
His new café-cum-patisserie will be launched next month. His nine-year-old son calls out to give him a daily report of the trials. “It’s not tasting as it should,” says the child about an apprentice’s efforts.
For a cuisine to go pop, it is children who must taste and test.
