Indigenous cooks serve up stories of the land and seasons

During Losar, or the Tibetan lunar new year in February, the Kinnaura tribe of Himachal Pradesh prepares tingmo, a fluffy steamed bread that is twisted to resemble a floral bun. While it is eaten the year-round, during the new year it is offered to the gods, says YouTuber Panma Pharka.

In Andhra Pradesh, chikkudu vada is a deep-fried broad bean fritter and is key to Makar Sankranti celebrations of the Koya tribe. “The beans are plucked only after the rituals are performed,” says Eluru-based Sodem Kranthikiran Dora, who works with women SHGs (self-help groups) to promote indigenous recipes. Last month, Pharka and Dora travelled to Mumbai to introduce diners to the ceremonial foods of their communities at a pop-up hosted at the restaurant, Ishaara.

Food traditions from India’s indigenous communities are slowly finding their way into urban dining spaces as some of the country’s top chefs turn to foraged ingredients for inspiration. Mahua, red ants, wild greens and mushrooms are now anchoring mainstream menus. But what is far more exciting is the growing involvement of these communities in driving the narrative.

While fine-dining restaurants are collaborating with cooks from tribal communities, bespoke travel experiences are offering a closer look at their foodways through special meals featuring indigenous food. Entrepreneurs within these communities are also reimagining their everyday dishes through a contemporary lens, familiarising diners with flavours shaped by forests, seasons and wisdom.

“Our cuisines connect with ideas of sustainability, seasonality and traditional knowledge, which many diners are starting to value now,” says Manisha Oraon, co-founder of The Open Field, an agro-tech platform that started in 2021 and operates at the grassroots level with forest communities in Ranchi, Jharkhand. A year ago, Oraon, 35, founded The Tribal Table to host pop-ups and farm-to-table experiences with an aim to “place her ancestral food where it belongs”.

Storytelling lies at the heart of the efforts, and for her, it comes alive through pop-ups. Dishes cooked with bamboo shoots, tubers, mahua, fermented rice and sun-dried lentil crisps have earned a spot complete with modern plating at The Leela Palace in Jaipur and Roseate House in Delhi, among other restaurants.

Presentation matters too. Take patta roti, a flatbread made with foraged ingredients and millet flour. To make it visually resonate with urban diners, the dough is placed on sal leaves, allowing their natural veins to imprint on the surface. Or potato wedges finished with a dusting of powdered futkal (or wild ficus) leaves, and served with a dip.

A dentist, Oraon organises health camps across Jharkhand, where she also documents the local food traditions. Drawing from her fieldwork, she now serves nine distinct thalis representing the food of the Munda, Asur, Santhal and Oraon communities.

Kinnaur-based Pharka, 23, has no professional culinary training. Through her YouTube channel (@Panma_Pharka_07), she documents her life and cuisine in the Himalayas. Yet, at Ishaara, she effortlessly plated her dishes along with the resident chefs. She and Dora were among six cooks invited to the Mumbai pop-up in collaboration with Samvaad, a Jamshedpur-based tribal conclave organised by the Tata Steel Foundation (TSF). Since its inception in 2014, TSF, through its tribal cuisines programme, has cultivated a network of home cooks who participate in cook-offs and food festivals.

Prashant Issar, the founder of Ishaara, believes giving the home cooks a platform was imperative, especially in a city like Mumbai. “You have everything from omakase to hyper-regional Chettinad, but almost nothing that represents the food of communities that have lived on this land the longest and whose relationship with food is perhaps the most honest of all,” he says.

The members stayed true to their cuisines, and there was no intervention by professional chefs. In doing so, they sparked considerable curiosity among diners. “The steamed cassava cake of Assam’s Karbi tribe reminded one diner of a dish their grandmother made. It was quite moving, because she wasn’t from a tribal community,” he adds.

The kitchen team of Lipika Dudhoria, who co-runs the heritage boutique property Bari Kothi in Murshidabad, West Bengal, includes members from the local Santhal community. The team serves an immersive meal curated in their village homes in Azimganj nearby. The menu honours the rhythm of the land—gourds and banana blossoms in summer, leafy greens in the monsoon, and root vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower in winter, served either fire-roasted as mashes (such as tomato sipi and potol/bottle gourd sipi) or added to lentils. The tables are laid under the open sky, amid lush paddy fields.

Oraon believes the acceptance is not universal. “Our foods are often labelled as primitive and not sophisticated. Therefore, one of the real challenges is presenting them in a way that feels accessible to a wider audience without stripping them of their context,” she says.

The answer, therefore, lies in involving them in the process. “What restaurants need to do is take them in as experts, not just as inspiration. It also means creating financial models where they could benefit,” says Issar.

As more cooks like Pharka put plates of tingmo on the pass, diners can hope to seek deeper connections with their land and food.