The next time you pick up a menu, look for a secret hiding in plain sight. Seasonal food used to mean a chalkboard of mango specials in May. But as harvests get less reliable in the climate crisis, restaurant owners across India are finding it harder to follow a set menu. So, they’re switching to a risky model: Dynamic recipes. These are dishes that sound the same, and are priced the same, but are made differently depending on the availability of ingredients.
Season’s eatings
A commercial menu is set, the flavour combinations locked in, the dishes crafted for both memorability and profit. Most diners revisit restaurants precisely to eat the things they liked before. So, commercial kitchens are rethinking how they operate. At Fig & Maple, chef-founder Radhika Khandelwal still showcases seasonal ingredients. Khandelwal’s conversations with farmers used to be about deliveries. Kafal berries from Uttarakhand rely on a balmy summer; certain varieties of Himalayan citrus simply don’t reach markets if there has been too much rain. So, instead of locking dishes around one hero ingredient, their recipes accommodate what’s available. In the Himalayas, rhododendron blooms used to herald the arrival of spring in the mountains. Wild mushrooms, Himalayan berries, and foraged herbs are available in shorter, less predictable windows. “That’s what climate change looks like up here. It’s not that an ingredient disappears. It’s that the calendar itself moves, one season bleeding into the next, until the rhythm we relied on stops holding. In the restaurant business, as with any business, it helps to have some control over the means of production. Mumbai restaurant, The Table, operates its own one-acre farm 100km away in Alibaug, growing cabbage, cauliflower, beetroots, kale, and basil. It gives co-founder Gauri Devidayal a unique vantage point: She can see seasonal changes in real-time and respond, almost immediately, with adaptations on the menu. This increasingly means that the best menu is no longer the one a restaurant can guarantee. It is the one that nature allows it to cook that day.
Because running a restaurant is the exact opposite of browsing the bazaar and cooking at home. Because it rained too early, summer got too hot, or winter ghosted the farm this year, this can’t happen if veggies and ingredients are unavailable.
“What we aim for is a consistent experience, not a consistent ingredient list,” she says. “But that clock has shifted,” says Prateek Sadhu, who runs the celebrated restaurant Naar in Kasauli.
“The flowers come earlier than usual, and some years, by the time we start harvesting, they’re already gone. “Today, we discuss weather forecasts, crop health, and contingency planning.
