Cook like a chef with produce you won’t find on your instant grocery app
Where are chefs stocking their pantries from, and can you get the same produce? Lounge dives into the secret suppliers of India's culinary scene
At Otra, the south Mumbai restaurant offering Latin American cuisine, the entire menu hinges on a steady supply of corn kernels that can be nixtamalized (soaked in an alkaline solution to break down cell walls and make them easier to turn into flour). The corn is used to make tacos, tostadas and chocoyotes. Chef Alex Sanchez sources the kernels from Three One Farms in Ludhiana, Punjab, run by a seventh-generation farmer Anushka Neyol. Together Sanchez and Neyol have done three seasons of trials over two years to finally get the product to market.
Sanchez says, “I just proposed (in July 2021) if she would be interested in joining us (to find the right corn) and seeing where it goes." In the years since that first conversation, Neyol worked with farmers and researchers at Ludhiana’s Punjab Agricultural University and Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi to learn about the crop. Otra now uses about 100kg of corn a month.
As the country’s dining scene evolves, the need for specific ingredients, ranging from mushrooms to capers, sumac to cheese, is growing. Chefs are sourcing India-harvested produce instead of importing, even as different suppliers showcase the country’s diverse bounty of hyper local, sometimes foraged vegetables and greens.
Then there are the entrepreneurs—ranging from cheesemakers to fermentation specialists—who have created their own niche, ensuring that the country’s restaurants have access to a range of options from different parts of India. Cooking enthusiasts who wish to replicate the flavours served in a restaurant, seek out these ingredients too.
Renjie Wong, a Singaporean expat in Mumbai, notes how buying from farms introduced him to Indian seasonality. “Nowhere else have I encountered this idea of winter being the best time for greens. It’s usually associated with spring." He mentions Pune-based Offerings Farm’s pandan and soy milk as two stand out products he’s been buying.
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Farms like Offerings and Vrindavan supply Mumbai and Pune-based restaurants like Kala Ghoda Cafe, The Bombay Canteen (Vrindavan supplies them with carom seeds) and GroundUp, while Green Apron supplies mushrooms to Navu and Tijouri in Bengaluru and Purple Patch ships Bengaluru and Kochi-based restaurants fruits like blueberries, and beetroot.
If you speak to chefs in the National Capital Region (NCR), they’ll name suppliers like Krishi Cress (Megu’s chef Shubham Thakur gets his mizuna, shiso and some pumpkin variants from them) and Better Greens, which supplies fruit to Bhawan and Mjol Bakehouse. Manav Khanna, head chef at Banng, which serves Bangkok-inspired dishes in Gurugram, learnt about Shroomery, a speciality mushroom grower based in Haryana’s Bissar village, from NCR’s other chefs.
Sumit Sharan, the founder of Shroomery, took a course at Solan’s ICAR-Directorate of Mushroom Research before he started growing fungi in March 2018. He now supplies everything from portobello to cremini mushrooms to restaurants and hotels across the country. He’s also found an audience with home cooks or those he’s interacted with during farmer’s markets and weekend pop-ups.
Husband and wife Srikanth Suryanarayan and Fiona Arakal supply capers to restaurants across the country. Ishka Farms is the country’s first caper farm and is spread across 100 acres in Tuticorin district. Co-founder Arakal says, “There was no one else growing it at that time in an organised manner. You only had the wild harvest from Ladakh. The whole idea was to do something where we could set the benchmark for quality."
The first crop was sold in January 2017, and over the years, they’ve started supplying a variety of items from brined caper leaves to different sized capers to restaurants like Delhi’s Fig & Maple, Goa’s Hideaway, Mumbai’s Bandra Born and Kolkata’s Sienna.
But there are also a host of ingredients that have never made it to restaurant menus, as they’re used in a specific type of cooking, found only during a certain time of the year, or haven’t before been shipped outside of their germinating region. Now companies like Hill Wild, Ladakh Basket and Monk’s Bouffe are working with farmers and forgers to harvest and find ingredients that range from wild sumac and black buckwheat to mahua and honey. Hill Wild, co-founded by Manipur-based Zeinorin Angkang and Leiyolan Vashum, ships ingredients from the North-East across the country. At Papa’s, the 12-seater chef’s table by Hussain Shahzad in Mumbai, Manipur’s sirarakhong chilli is used to make an oil to bind their tingmos, which are then stuffed with blue cheese.
Companies like Bengal’s Amar Khamar and Gujarat’s OOO Farms are working to highlight, catalogue and sell heirloom varieties of rice like Burma black, chamarmani and Konkan red rice to a market eager to learn more about regional variations.
Amar Khamar’s co-founder Sujoy Chatterjee says the goal at their Kolkata store-cum-eatery (which is in the process of being renamed Amar Khamar) is to have “people come, see and taste" the different varieties of heirloom rice, which are “a hugely rich living heritage". Their gobindobhog rice and spices like turmeric and mustard seeds are pantry staples in the homes of several enthusiastic cooks.
Chef Vivek Salunkhe of Bengaluru’s Omakase-style restaurant Crackle Kitchen has been sourcing from Melchior cheese for their makke ka taco stuffed with goat cheese. Valentin Melchior, a Frenchman who has been living in Bengaluru for 10 years, started making the French soft cheese Tomme back in July 2020 during covid, when imports were hard to get.
“Cheese takes a lot of energy and time, and a lot of practice—so it took a long time before I succeeded in making a decent cheese." Since January 2022 he’s been retailing cheese, and has expanded into cheeses like Gouda, Camembert and more which he supplies to the city’s Oberoi hotel as well.
By the end of May, Maharashtra’s Vrindavan Farms will open for bookings for a variety of mangoes; be it the Goan Mankhurd, Dasseri, Kesar or Alphonso. They ship pan India, but this year the yield is low and they could restrict their supply only to Maharashtra. Set a reminder to bring home some of the season’s juiciest, naturally grown mangoes.
Where to buy
Amar Khamer: amar-khamer.com
Better Greens: Instagram.com/eatbettergreens
Hill Wild: hillwild.com
Ishka Farms: ishkafarms.com
Krishi Cress: krishicress.com
Ladakh Basket: ladakhbasket.com
Melchior Cheese: melchiorcheese.mini.store
Monk’s Bouffe: monksbouffe.com
Offerings Farm: offerings-farms.myshopify.com
OOO Farms: ooofarms.com
Shroomery: shroomery.in
Three One Farms: threeonefarms.com
Vrindavan Farm: Vrindavanfarm.com
Aatish Nath is a Mumbai-based food and travel writer. He has contributed to the anthology, India’s most Legendary Restaurants (2024).
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