Chapter 7

The Times They Are A-changin’

“Come gather ‘round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone”
- Bob Dylan

In other words, move with the times, or you’ll be left behind.

Hmm not sure about that, Bob.

The ever-shifting landscape of culinary trends can sometimes disrupt your connection with food and distract you from your own ethos. Who is your target audience (ie your customers)? What do they keep coming back to your restaurant for? Which dishes are the most ordered? Would they like to see more ‘on trend’ dishes on the menu? Would they stop coming to your restaurant if they can’t find anything Instagrammable to order? Factors you would have never considered when starting a food business ten years ago suddenly come into play today.

Most important of all is acknowledging whether you are a trendsetter or a trend follower. Are you a person who moves with the times? Personally, nope, not me. My friends know me as someone who will catch on to the trend well after it’s done and dusted. Jumpsuits - two years later. Long dresses - three years later. Dull ‘modern’ coloured clothes - still not caught on. Clutch bags - starting clutching them after four years. Dhoti salwars - nope, ain’t gonna happen. You get my drift.

In hindsight, because we were not a ‘professional chef’-driven restaurant, time had the tendency of standing still in our kitchens. We were typically behind on trends. Not to be mistaken though, if I saw that a certain ingredient was suddenly showing up in a lot of restaurants’ and food bloggers’ Instagram feeds and everyone around me was talking about it, I would certainly Google it to find out more. If it was easily available and not very expensive, my husband was happy to be a guinea pig for new ideas. Even better, many of our regular customers who came to us everyday were also happy to try out new dishes before we introduced them in our permanent menu. They became our focus group, so to speak.

And then there were interactions like these…

“Do you have vegan dessert?”

“Yes, yes, our carrot cake is made with oil”, I would gleefully tell the customer.

“Does it have egg?”

“Um, yes. Sorry I guess we don’t have any vegan dessert then,” followed by frantic browsing to figure out what ingredients are considered vegan and what is not (before unknowingly forcing our customers to commit sacrilege).

“Do you have anything gluten free?” Google aunty would firmly inform me that atta was not gluten free. Oh well, then “no, we do not have any gluten free desserts”. On that note, I must admit, I was ashamed when I realized we were sitting on a gold mine of ancient grains and millets that happened to be ‘GF’ that were being overlooked by our restaurants. That led me to introduce a Nachni & Almond Cake which soon became our top seller at PLENTY. It helped that millets were also becoming very trendy and I was glad to be in the front seat of that bandwagon.

“Do you have anything gluten-free, sugar-free and vegan?” My response to questions like these is not fit for print.

“Why don’t you start something with moringa? It’s so healthy,” said one customer. My husband came into the kitchen and related the question to me. I googled ‘what is moringa’. “What!! He wants singi?? I’ve been eating that in my sindhi curry and singi aloo subzi for decades! I ain’t making any shmancy sourdough toast topped with moringa anything! Tell them to come on Sunday, eat our Sindhi Thali and relish the ‘moringa’ in that.”

Throughout our time as restaurateurs we were continuously peppered with requests to add the latest ‘superfood’ to our menus. But ultimately those ingredients needed to pass through my own personal sniff test.

Kale? I hate it, not starting that.

Quinoa? Tastes like nothing, not starting that. However, soon started that because my son likes it :)

Almond flour? Do you know the price per kg!? Not starting that. Soon started that because the recipe only required 100 gm in a cake. Ok, can afford that.

Seeds and Grains?  The song ‘chidiya rani, badi sayani. chugti dana peeti pani’ ,chu chu karke dana laati, fur fur karke woh udd jaati’ came to mind. Oh well, let’s sprinkle it on some salads.

Chia Seeds? Only if I want to know what it feels like to eat a bunch of tadpoles.

Truffle Oil?  Hate it with all my heart. But had to jump on the trend and our truffle fries did great. Duh, what’s not to like when there’s deep fried potatoes involved?

Avo Toast.  Avo tastes like nothing, in my opinion. Don’t hate me. However, after a lot of convincing by my chefs, we included our own version of the mighty Avo Toast to the PLENTY menu. Our secret was to add pickled beetroot and a secret spread to the toast which took it to another level of yumminess. We even started making our own bread. Ask anyone, for those four years we had the best Avo Toast in Bombay. It got so crazy that our avocado supplier couldn’t keep up with our demand. Weekends would be even crazier. Literally every single table would order it before they had even sat down. PLENTY became synonymous with Avo Toast. Even now, anyone and everyone who meets us bemoans the fact that they don’t get to eat anything like it anywhere in the city. Anyway, bragging aside, that was one trend we were very happy to have caught on to. It became our bread and butter, our claim to fame.

My husband went to Copenhagen a few years ago and came back singing the praises of their famous Espresso Lemonade. So the PLENTY kitchen was put to work to develop our own house recipe. The winning concoction consisted of espresso, tonic water, lemon juice and soda. He approved. Customers didn’t. “Coffee khatta tha,” was a common response. Everyday the entire pot would be given to ‘Sir’ because there were no orders for it. Then again, we started Vietnamese coffee without going to Vietnam, and that became crazy popular. Go figure.

Remember Kombucha? Out of every three orders, one would be returned to the kitchen, “It was tasting spoilt and fermented,” said several annoyed customers. On the other hand we started apna good old Aam Panna at Food for Thought and it was always the drink of the season!

I insisted on creating our own trends. Like our Italian Thali. If you like Italian food, wouldn’t you want a taster of everything Italian in one plate? Seemed like an obvious one to me. We had a Sindhi Thali, and even a Chinese Thali (this one was because I looove fried rice and wanted any excuse to add it to the menu).

Whether it was regional breakfast items or continental thalis, you’d be hard pressed to find a single menu that had Poha, Misal, Dabeli, Cheela, Sabudana Khichdi, Koki, Anda Ghotala, Fondue Kejriwal and Goa Sausage Pav all in the same place. The trend we created was simple, good, wholesome food. Who wants fluff when you have taste.

The one trend I was very happy with was black rice. It tasted great and there was so much we could do with it. We started a Wasabi Black Rice Bowl which was extremely popular. Maybe because we gave it an asian twist and it felt like a full meal in one bowl (another thing we were famous for). Many customers started substituting black rice for plain rice with their curries and we were happy to oblige.

Another favourite was Turkish Eggs. That trend made no sense for us initially. Who wants to eat eggs with yoghurt, right? But we were glad to be proven wrong. We gave it our classic twist and topped the eggs with malvani powder,  butter tadka, crisp onions, and it was just delicious.

I’d like to believe we did just fine by bucking the trends. As Julia Child once said, “You don’t have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces, just good food from fresh ingredients”.

Take that, Bob.