Is the sudden explosion of pan-Asian restaurants narrowing our tastes?

Over half of the new restaurants opening across India of late are variants of Asian cuisine with a near-uniform flavour profile. Might this be killing the diversity of the great Indian culinary experience?

They are everywhere you go—dim sum platters, glass noodles, chilli sauce in tiny bowls and kitschy renditions of Buddhist monks and random words inscribed in Mandarin over neon-hued walls. Almost every second email that a journalist or blogger writing about food receives is that of a newly-opened pan-Asian restaurant. 

For me, visiting these restaurants— that all look more similar than a pair of Siamese twins— is anticlimactic on two levels. For one, they have quite literally killed every ounce of joy I derived from ordering a sumptuous bowl of manchow soup. And second, my weekly visits to my favourite restaurant in Mumbai, the 77-year-old Ling’s Pavilion in Colaba have become less frequent. My taste buds have been mercilessly assaulted by the endlessly mundane tasting edamame dimsums and the near-torturous noodles named after random provinces of China and the most exotic-sounding prefectures of Japan. 

It is no secret that as Indians, we love our desi Chinese. At this point, I’d perhaps like to clarify that those grease- and soot-covered makeshift ‘Indian Chinese’ stalls by the road painted in bright red with dragon motifs are still charming—minus the likelihood of diarrhoea. My bone of contention here is the slightly upscale restaurants branding themselves as pan-Asian that just won’t stop popping up in our cities. Did they always exist? Or was I simply living under a rock?

The great wave of Asia 

“The explosion of pan-Asian restaurants in our cities could be attributed to the type of ingredients used,” opines Gurmehar Sethi, chef and co-founder at Klap restaurant in New Delhi. “The flavour profile and ingredients are pretty similar to the ones used in Indian cuisine, so that makes these ingredients more accessible and available.”

Sethi’s Klap has attempted to innovate the saturated field occupied by Asian restaurants in the nearby Khan Market in the capital by coming up with the “Two fingers, One Bite” that foregrounds a central question—can we give you a meal in a single bite? 

He adds that there is a constant effort at bringing together “unpredictable ingredients and serendipitous flavours” served up with panache. However, Sethi believes that every restaurant has its own aesthetic and ethos when it comes to its concept and menu. “For example, every restaurant can serve dim sum but it comes down to how consistent you are with your base flavours, quality and house recipe.”

If you ask Pawan Shahri of Chrome Hospitality who has been on a restaurant-opening spree, having recently opened Blah in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex, Donna Deli, Demy and Eve, one can attribute the explosion of pan-Asian restaurants to the Asian palate that has dominated Indian taste buds over the years to the point where it has grown to be the second-highest-consumed cuisine bracket in the country. 

“Also, while everyone loves Asian food, the differentiation that comes from the vast [Asian] landscape makes it impossible for all dishes to ever be featured on a single menu,” he says. “All of these factors have led to the explosion of so many pan-Asian restaurants in our cities and the repeat eating factor and comfort of this cuisine only makes more and more people try this cuisine.” 

Preserving stories

For the Tham brothers of Chinese origin, owners of Koko and the rapidly expanding Foo, serving pan-Asian food in their restaurants was never a buzzword but rather in consonance with their own heritage. Keenan Tham still remembers running around their family restaurant, Kamling, in Churchgate, where he  grew up with his brother Ryan–one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in Mumbai, co-established by their grandfather, Mon Yiu Tham back in the 1950s.

In a profoundly saturated field, how does one preserve heritage? Tham believes that loyal customers will always know the difference. The way he sees it–their restaurants were among the first ones that started serving the now-famed blue rice. “We draw a lot on our own travels apart from our culture. So even the blue rice was based on our travels in the interior of southeast Asian countries.”

However, offshoot industries in the pan-Asian world are also having their moment in the sun. After all, the growth of such restaurants isn’t simply limited to dimsums and edamame dumplings but also becomes the ripe ground for finer, more specific industries. One of them is Project Sake, established in 2017 with the objective of bringing a collection of premium sake to India—a Japanese rice-fermented alcoholic beverage. 

“Indian drinkers are primed for something new and the world of sake brings more versatile selections on the menu,” says Vipin Aggarwal, co-founder of Project Sake. “They are looking for more options with their beverages apart from just beer and wine and sake fits perfectly well in the mix.” According to him, the explosion of pan-Asian restaurants should be viewed as good news for tier-2 and tier-3 cities where the idea of a pan-Asian restaurant is still novel as a concept.  

Always reinventing 

As with all explosions, is the wave of pan-Asian restaurants actually just a bubble waiting to burst? If you ask Aggarwal, the reality–and indeed the future of pan-Asian restaurants in our metros–might just be a little more nuanced. 

“We think the future of pan-Asian restaurants highly depends on continuous innovation and authenticity of the ingredients they use to get Indian customers who are well-travelled and are looking for the same kind of experience they have witnessed overseas,” explains Aggarwal. “For instance, we are already seeing ramen and yakiniku from Japan to be the next new area of interest for Japanese restaurants in India and there is a lot of interest in Korean and Vietnamese food at the moment too.”

Even in terms of Vietnamese cuisine, Plural, a Vietnamese restaurant in the heart of Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda has taken the quantum leap by positioning it as a restaurant serving vegetarian food. This juxtaposition might seem odd to someone on the outside but fits perfectly well in the context of an area that is frequented by a predominantly vegetarian crowd of traders and stock brokers. Additionally, the recent announcement of direct flights from India to Vietnam by VietAir has already brought down the fares massively—with a round trip to Vietnam now costing less than ₹ 20,000 if booked a month in advance. 

In this context, can the pan-Asian boom be solely attributed to a globalised world or just lethargy on the part of restaurant owners playing it safe? We’ll let you and your taste buds be the judge.

Also Read: Why does Mexican food in India fail to stick?

Also Read: These restaurants and food ventures are putting the spotlight on unique global culinary traditions

Also Read: How can you survive and make it big in the Indian F&B industry? We ask Riyaaz Amlani