One of the most fascinating aspects of the culinary world is that no matter how many centuries go by, there’s always something new to discover. From the discovery of cooking with fire around 2 million years ago, the art of creating new dishes has been a constant evolution. But like so many things in life, it always comes full circle, as it has with the new wave of ingredient-first cooking.
The movement which is heavily influenced by New Nordic techniques simply champions a return to local ingredients that are sustainably sourced and this is something that Chef Vanika Choudhary is very familiar with. Though she didn’t come from a culinary background, she found her calling after taking a sabbatical from work and opening Sequel, a chain of farm-to-fork bistros that honoured local and organic produce.
That journey led her deeper in her exploration of food and eventually to Noon – a name inspired by the Kashmiri word for salt – an experimental kitchen in Bandra Kurla Complex with a focus on lesser-known ingredients and techniques from Kashmir. This space allowed her to delve deeper into one of her other great loves, the art of fermentation.
Noon’s menu is an ode to the potential of this ancient technique and their kitchen lab is chocked full of experiments. While koji fermentation has been a part of Japanese culture for centuries, using it in Indian food is one that’s still relatively new and they're expanding on the uses it has in both the sweet and savoury avatars. Having had the chance to eat my way through their beautifully curated lunch menu, my biggest takeaway is that there is so much potential and that Chef Vanika has created an experience that feels deeply personal and nostalgic and yet entirely revolutionary.
1st Course
Pani Puri | Lacto Fermented Pineapple | Pineapple & Pandan Kombucha
Inside a textured Koji-fermented Khapli wheat puri lie chunks of tangy lacto-fermented pineapple drizzled with a fermented imli sauce, served with a refreshing pineapple and pandan kombucha ‘pani’ served on a handmade poplar wood tray.
How did you first build a relationship with food?
I think my earliest memories are the scenes I observed and absorbed in the kitchen with my mum. The use of mortar pestle whether it was for fresh chutneys each morning or things I’d see in the garden being fermented for different achaars. My nani used to make at least 30 different kinds whether it was aam ki achaar in the summer. Kanji was made in the winter with indigenous black carrots from Srinagar. But the golden rule was always picking the best, and freshest seasonal produce available. And this concept of eating seasonal food across 4 different seasons is something I grew up with and really started to miss when I went back to Bombay because you don’t really have proper seasons there, it’s the calendar of these seasons that governs the produce you eat. So for example, Spring is the season when your forage for gucchi, (wild morels) which don’t have a shelf life of more than 2 days so we’d sun dry them for weeks to preserve them for the rest of the year. I also remember Kasrod (fiddlehead fern) achaar from foraged greens found in Himachal and the outskirts of Jammu I grew up eating these different things and spices which are so different from the rest of the subcontinent. These were all part of the earliest memories I have of food. These were mainly from my nani and my mum but my also had a lot to do with it. He has been composting ever since I can remember, we never used to throw away kitchen waste and it was from him that I learned my love for growing your own produce.
2nd Course
Buckwheat Tartlets | Slow Roasted Turnips | Goat Cream | Black Garlic
The buckwheat tartlets are a nod to home for Chef Vanika as it was a grain they ate a lot during fasting seasons. Filled with a smooth, rich goat cheese cream made in-house and topped with slices of tender turnips and three-month-aged black garlic with a contrasting side of crunchy gem lettuce.
What led you to create Noon?
It took me a long time to go back to my roots but they shaped the way I look at food and how I cook and I wanted to pass down this heritage and preserve it for my son. I think it’s important for us to go back to this way of life to preserve our heritage and agricultural history. I started conceptualising Noon when I found out I was pregnant and all I wanted to eat was Gucchi pulao. It's a very Kashmiri dish and every family has their own recipe. And I wanted to sip on kanji and eat shalgam ki acchar, a kohlrabi and turnip pickle which is particular to Kashmir and made from a specific type of purple turnip. This is all I wanted to eat and celebrate the news and it was a calling to go back to my roots. So that’s when the idea of noon came about. A place that celebrated indigenous ingredients from across the country but has its genesis in my childhood. Now we’ve taken it a step further and in addition to highlighting produce from J&K we work with Ladakh Basket – a social enterprise and network of 35 women farmers in Ladakh – where we spend most of the summers foraging for ingredients in the Changthangi area of Ladakh.
3rd Course
Khambir Roti | Thangthur, Skotse | Charred Tiger Prawns, Umbok
Kashmir on three plates. A wholewheat sourdough made with Khapli and ancient wheat grain along with a Thangthur yoghurt-based dip topped with forgaed wild onion chives and a coal-charred tiger prawn with Umbok a rare herb from Fulak, Ladakh.
What are some of the most unique additions to Noon’s menu?
The way we spotlight the lesser-known produce that never really makes it to the mainstream dining scene. Like the wild caraway which is a cross between mint and fennel, Sia, a wild rose flower that only grows above 15,000 feet, Moldavian dragonhead a very special herb, wild garlic chives, rose hips and black buckwheat. This is indigenous to Ladakh and stone ground in a traditional watermill. Then there are buckwheat greens and things like that never make it to the mainstream. How we interpret these ingredients in a modern format is also unique to us.
4th Course
Smoked Himalayan Trout with Pumpkin Kasundi | Buckwheat Sourdough | Pumpkin Kasundi Butter
Flaky smoked trout with foraged mustard greens with a slice of dense and nutty pumpkin sourdough and fermented pumpkin kasundi butter.
What is the core of your food philosophy?
I personally avoid the word cuisine-agnostic because I don’t really think of it as culturally appropriate. For me personally, a lot of it goes back to my childhood and how things were done then. Being able to trace the product back to the farmer that grew it and celebrates them also forms my philosophy at Noon. I think the way ingredient-driven restaurants are moving across the world is in a similar way although the concept is still quite a niche in India.
Everything is seasonal, it’s about reimagining Indian cuisine using koji-based fermentation. For the vegetarian menu, we have Kand which is particular to Maharashtra with straw mushrooms and shallots cooked on hot coals and braised with pumpkin kasundi which has been transformed using fermentation and koji because we wanted to see what could be done with this otherwise humble vegetable. We make our own koji with Amber Mohar rice so we take the pumpkin, koji and some of the skotse and wild mustard and ferment it for four weeks.
Kasundi of course is a quintessential part of Bengali cuisine and we decided to marry that with some of our foraged ingredients. The result tastes like kasundi, but it’s fermented, deeply umami and slightly sweet from the pumpkin, spicy from the chilli, and zingy from the wild garlic. Traditional techniques bring nostalgia, celebrating what we ate growing up. But what’s important for us is showcasing that using modern techniques like koji fermentation – well, modern for us at least, in Japan they’ve done it since time immemorial. One is bringing in a sense of excitement and adventure when someone’s dining here. For example, the kasundi dish would probably bring back memories of the Bengali style but then they get to explore how we’ve evolved it.
5th Course
Coconut Ice Cream | Kerala Vanilla | Puffed Amaranth Crumble | Lacto-Fermented Strawberries| Wild Mustard | Nolen Gur Garum
A balance of sweet and savoury with crunchy amaranth, smooth coconut ice cream with hints of Idukki vanilla and tart strawberries with an umami date palm jaggery (gur) garum.
What's the future of fermentation in India?
I think it’s just the beginning of this space in India, but it’s a journey well-begun. What we do at Noon isn’t just Koji based, we have 25 different ferments in our kitchen lab, everything from Miso, to shoyu, mole, tamari, vinegars, and garums, all of this is through indigenous produce which we source mostly from Ladakh and J&K. It’s just the beginning and I personally feel this is the year fermentation will play a big role on menus beyond the savoury foods and into desserts and craft cocktails as well and that’s what we’ve been doing at Noon since we opened.