Local spices, recipes and flavours lure in more takers

Local ingredients and local flavours are the latest trends in food and beverages across hotels, bars and restaurants. Chefs have started using local spices, recipes and flavours to capture as much of the customers’ hearts in the micro markets as well as attract new customers and one-time visitors to try out a different cuisine or concept.
Local procurement also leads to better quality, freshness, flexibility of purchase capabilities and lower inventory and storage. Local ingredients have also made their way into bars, where mixologists and bar tenders use these to blend into cocktails, mocktails, spiked beverages and shots.
Some notable regional cocktails from across India are ‘Gondhoraj Lassi’, ‘Gondhoraj Lime Mozito’ and ‘Ginger Kasundi Cooler’ (West Bengal); ‘Tulsi Martini’, ‘Firangi Paan’ and ‘Baileys Lassi’ (by renowned mixologist Nitin Prasad from The Park, New Delhi); ‘Meena Colana’ (South Indian version of the globally renowned Pina Colada with McDowell’s dark rum, coconut milk and fresh pineapple), ‘Copper Monkey’ (Monkey Bar, New Delhi) and ‘Nizami Gulkund Martini’ (The Park, Hyderabad).
There are also numerous beverages, fresh ingredients, infusions, molecular cocktails and shots that have been innovated across the country.
The head mixologist is also the ‘beverage chef’ of the establishment. This is the latest trend emerging worldwide where mixologists are curating master creations from food ingredients, organic infusions, beverages and use of a molecular kit to create molecular cocktails, caviar shots and more.
Healthy food, low-calorie diets and fresh raw food bars are also slowly coming into various urban and resort locations. But they are still far from being popular in most locations as India is still a very nascent and developing market with respect to global food trends and concepts.
While New York, London, Paris, Singapore, Hong Kong, Macau and Las Vegas are global cities known for hotels, restaurants, bars, nightspots and casinos, Indian cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are also now well established on the map of Asia and destined for a good future.