Food Trends with Chef. Pooja Dhingra

An accomplished Pastry Chef, Pooja Dhingra believes in reinvention offering innovative culinary delights. She hosts a Chef’s special Table No. 13 at her café for a special off-the-menu meal experience.

Dhingra talks to us about the country’s speedily evolving food scene while sharing her experience of running a thriving commercial kitchen.

Chef. Pooja Dhingra

Tell us a couple of the most interesting current food trends.

Currently, I’m seeing a lot of health food trends, as people are becoming really particular about what they’re eating, where they’re eating and where their ingredients are coming from. Especially focusing on where the produce is being sourced.

I see a lot of people going for gluten free foods and locally sourced produce. So health trends are exceedingly popular right now.

Earlier, people took a lot of pride in saying ‘We get our fish from here and our meat from there’. However, the things have turned now to ‘How local can you be?’ so there’s a lot of emphasis on sustainability and sourcing produce locally.

Do you try to focus on organic ingredients?

In India, everything comes from our farms, so the produce is pretty organic. However, we do get Vanilla and even eggs that are farm fresh. So yes, we do focus on organic produce as much as we can.

Does your technique use liquid nitrogen? What is your take on it?

I don’t actually. It’s great for desserts, ice creams, etc. But personally, I don’t use it because I stick to traditional cooking styles.

Describe the relationship between back-of-the-house and front-of-the-house operations.

While this happens in every restaurant, my kitchen personally does not have such a great differentiation because we have a single kitchen that handles everything, then we have the outlets that are the front. So, it basically works like a well-oiled machine.

Tell us something about you that might surprise people.

Well, my original plan was to start my own gym. So when I was 16 years old, I got into fitness and became a Reebok certified trainer. The plan was to be a lawyer-cum-fitness instructor.

Then I moved to Switzerland, which was the end of that chapter. Switzerland was where I explored my love for food. (Smiles)

Aditi Balsaver