It's official: Delhi is no longer the Republic of Butter Chicken

Rarely does a restaurant open in Delhi-NCR and get immediate attention from the social media the way that San-adi-ge has.

Located in one uncelebrated corner of the Malcha Marg Market, at an address where a "global cuisine" restaurant ran unsuccessfully for a little over a year, San-adi-ge, which serves Mangalorean coastal cuisine, is owned and operated by a Karnataka-based hospitality company that has made no concession for Delhi's time-tested fondness for anything that tastes like butter chicken or, worse, gobhi manchurian.

The open arms with which Sana-di-ge has been welcomed is indicative of a serious evolutionary leap that Delhi has taken in the past couple of years.

I believe that unlike in the past, Delhi can no longer be aptly described as the Republic of Butter Chicken. Its cosmopolitan social profile is getting reflected in the more all-embracing taste buds of its citizens and the growing space for restaurants such as Sana-di-ge, whose crab soup and prawn butter garlic have set the new gold standard for caterers and restaurants aspiring to serve Mangalorean coastal cuisine.

I first woke up to the evolution of Delhi's taste buds when I saw the response to journalist-turned-micro-finance-specialist and food connoisseur Pritha Sen's soiree a couple of years ago to promote the cuisine of pre-Partition East Bengal cuisine, especially the Goalundo steamer chicken curry. The people who showed up for the one-day event were not just Bengalis on a nostalgia trip; they represented a cross-section of the city's dining community.

I saw a repeat of the phenomenon in the Parsi Bazaar that SodaBottleOpenerWala has been organising at the Cyber Hub in Gurgaon in the past two years.

The turnouts have been equally cosmopolitan at Shabnam Borah's showcase of Assamese Muslim cuisine, or at Sneha Saikia's pop-ups, which are also dedicated to the pleasures of the Assamese table, albeit from the Hindu side, or at the Kerala toddy shop food showcase rolled out by filmmaker-turned-chef Arun Kumar TR at Cafe Dalal Street in Connaught Place.

The trickle to state government bhawans has also become a steady stream, with Assam, Goa, Jammu and Kashmir and West Bengal being the most sought after.

Bihar became the latest unlikely addition to this list after Potbelly opened at the state bhawan near what was formerly Chanakya Cinema. Food, clearly, has become a gateway for Delhi's many communities to understand each other better.

The upsurge of interest in regional cuisines has created a fertile market for restaurants dishing out the incredible culinary diversity of India. There was a time when one could name only the lone warrior - Anjan Chatterjee's Oh Calcutta! at Nehru Place - but today, both the number and quality of regional players have gone up.

The other day, I was at Oh Calcutta! with my friend, Syed Belal Ahmed, who's the editor of Britain's Curry Life magazine, and was impressed by the full house on a Tuesday (a lean day for most restaurants in the city) and the significant improvement in the quality of the offerings (I still salivate at the thought of the unusual okra dish prepared with raw mangoes).

Oh Calcutta! today is not the only Bengali restaurant in the city - it has serious competitors in City of Joy (Aravalli Shopping Centre, Alaknanda) and Big Bongg Theory (Shahpur Jat), which are doing thriving business with their home-style cooking.

Likewise, Kerala's distinctive cuisine now comes smartly packaged at upscale restaurants such as The Toddy Shop in Hauz Khas Village, which serves food cooked by the mother of a city-based rocker named Anoop Kutty, and Mahabelly at the food court behind Saket's mall hub.

One can keep adding names. Punjab Grill at Select Citywalk, Saket, for instance, has brought home-style Punjabi food into the spotlight, giving us welcome relief from the butter-chicken-chhola-bhatura routine of traditional restaurants.

And of course, Carnatic Cafe at New Friends Colony continues to be the most sought-after destination for Udupi cuisine. I will rest my case though with a mention of the race for footfalls between SodaBottleOpenerWala and its competitor, Rustom's Bhonu, at Adchini.

Imagine Delhi having two Parsi restaurants and being divided into camps loyal to one or the other! The Republic of Butter Chicken, without doubt, has been given a quiet burial.

(Courtesy of Mail Today.)