There’s a whiff in the air, teasing your nose before you catch hold of it. The season is a-changing, bringing in that feeling of familiar-yet-new. It’s not just Autumn playing tricks, the soupçon of excitement that brushed by you is air from the fabled Pandora’s Box-opened with much craft by yours truly. We release the F&B industry’s deepest and darkest secrets, straight from the horse’s mouth. Beware, this wind spares no one.
New Delhi, circa 2016, is an epicure’s delight and has slowly edged out other cities to become the culinary capital of India. With new cuisines, culinary experiments, food festivals and fascinating concepts sprouting every fortnight, it is time we revel in the city’s changing culinary face. Each meal proves to be a delight with layers of flavour, inspiration and tremendous amounts of work that come together on the plate. A chef’s craft is on trial with every dish he/she creates for a guest whose role is soon shifting from a food discoverer to a food prosecutor.
In this era of culinary exploration, we wonder when the previously-calm Delhi guest turned into an indignant customer who would rather rant behind the comfort of their phone /computer screen than iron out the kinks with the restaurant manager first. Having a fairly discerning palate and knowing how to string a sentence peppered with culinary terms does not maketh a Food Critic. Across the globe, there are years of knowledge-building and writing before one gets to decide for their thousands of followers if the chef deserves an aye or a no. Running a restaurant in today’s times is one of the highest-risk vs. lowest-reward professions, and whilst that doesn’t let them off the hook, it’s important to be objective and fair. When did we lose our curious and creative streak to experiment and learn about what’s on our plate, where the intent of the dish comes from and how the food is sourced? When did we become a city of hyper-critical connoisseurs that could make even George Calombaris three shades pinker?
On the other side of the fence, our conversations with food critics and bloggers make us understand the precise process of critiquing and the amount of pre and post information gathering that goes into a food review. It’s uncomfortable to hear stories where restaurateur friends invite you for a meal and expect a glowing review, whether or not that’s the reality of the meal. This comes from experience, where we were asked to pull down a #DSSCReview because it had a tad too much (constructive) feedback for the Chef for a meal that didn’t match up to the brouhaha and fanfare. It’s quite simple really, a good review deserves good food.
We work and engage on a regular basis with most of the city’s leading restaurateurs, chefs and customers , and every meal or tipples sesh with them has resulted in a series of story-swaps of the key challenges they face as a consumer / blogger / restaurateur – some hilarious, some horrific. There is no smoke without fire and definitely no tequila without lime, so we decided to offer a platform to some of our fave friends from the industry to tell us their side, no holds barred, strictly anonymous (minus one brave man who makes a brilliant not-politically-correct point).
The DSSC Editorial team has collated 5 key submissions from a bunch that call out the practices of pseudo-critics and maverick restaurants and confess what irks them the most about their work.
Five days. Five stories. Five secrets (no more).
To begin with we have a charming restaurateur who may or may not have ventures in and outside Delhi. He has a bone to pick with the customer who is king but overlooks the adage ‘with great power comes great responsibility’.
Next up, we have the capital’s leading Piano Man in a display of bravery rarely seen in the industry shedding his cloak of anonymity. He clues us in on what it’s like to be at the performing end of things with a Delhi crowd that just doesn’t shut up.
We then turn to a young man and a young lady (in no particular order) who have caught the food-critic train and have been riding it well. They have made themselves authorities on food and have earned a place with the industry insiders.
At the end of the week, we have a DSSC fave who talks to us from the marketing side of things, anon yet again. He (or she) works with a lot of food entrepreneurs and bigwigs in the industry. Think of her (or him) as a permanent fixture outside the accounts office of most of Delhi’s restaurateurs, and they have a lot to say.
That’s all we let out before closing the lid on our Pandora this season. We hope this series throws your view of eating out in Delhi into disarray for the good. When you read, you’ll notice that despite it all, each person who wrote for us is in love with what they do. They want us to have a glimpse of that elation. They serve their passion up on a platter, so let’s be kind & constructive with our knives, forks and feedback at that. Let’s go to a gig to listen and applaud. And let’s have a heart to go with that appetite.
