A LEADING LIGHT IN INDIA’S FARM-TO-TABLE MOVEMENT, VANIKA CHOUDHARY IS TAKING THE COUNTRY’S CUISINE IN A BOLD NEW DIRECTION, WITH A FOCUS ON PRESERVATION AND FORAGED INGREDIENTS. WORDS: BEN OLSEN


Vanika Choudhary is surrounded by a mind- bending array of salts, pickles and ferments. There are yuzu-fermented cherries, achars (pickles) made from swede-like tamyung from Ladakh and herby Himalayan salt. “It’s my way of spotlighting and preserving recipes and foraged ingredients that are precious to our country but never make it to the mainstream dining scene,” she says. The founder of Mumbai’s fine-dining


restaurant Noon is in London for a two-day residency at restaurant 180 Corner. It’s part of an international tour, during which she’s been gilding her reputation for creating innovative dishes that offer a taste of India’s regions. Last night, her 10-course tasting menu revealed her flair for marrying flavour and texture, with dishes including charcoal-grilled lamb in a fermented pumpkin marinade, foraged mushroom with fava bean miso and sourdough roti served alongside pungent wild garlic and plump, yellow chilli-daubed lobster. Eight years ago, Choudhary quit her job


Choudhary’s spin on a Parsi


mawa cake is spiced with wild caraway seeds from Ladakh and topped with goat’s milk


ice cream flavoured with sea lettuce foraged in Palghar Right: Vanika Choudhary


as COO of a media company to pursue her vision of fostering a farm-to-table movement in India’s largest city. She didn’t complete any formal training, focusing instead on absorbing culinary knowledge from her family, before opening her first venture, Sequel, in Mumbai in 2016. She set aside time each day to expand her knowledge of ingredients and take courses


in culinary nutrition — resulting in Sequel’s focus on seasonal, organic produce and dishes that reflect her upbringing in the Kashmir city of Jammu. Here, close to the foothills of the Himalayas,


her father, a silk producer and botanist, would nurture crops and sun-dry morels on the roof. Meanwhile, her mother and grandmother would use a pestle and mortar to pound seasonal achars: mango in summer, fiddlehead ferns during the monsoon, galgal (aka hill lemons) and kohlrabi in winter. And when Choudhary was pregnant and living in Mumbai, craving the flavours of her childhood — gucchi pulao (pilau with morels) and kanji (a fermented carrot drink) — the concept for her next venture, Noon, gathered pace. “Everything I’d observed in our kitchen growing up shaped me as a cook,” she says. “But as much as I loved eating my grandmother’s food, I realised that for Noon, I wanted to create a new language for Indian food, based upon our incredible indigenous produce.” So began a creative journey that saw


Choudhary return to Jammu to finesse her family’s recipes and spend time in the mountains, followed by a transformative period at the monastery of Buddhist monk and revered chef Jeong Kwan in South Korea, which enhanced her understanding of ancient preservation techniques.


NATIONALGEOGRAPHIC.COM/TRAVEL 41


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100  |  Page 101  |  Page 102  |  Page 103  |  Page 104  |  Page 105  |  Page 106  |  Page 107  |  Page 108  |  Page 109  |  Page 110  |  Page 111  |  Page 112  |  Page 113  |  Page 114  |  Page 115  |  Page 116  |  Page 117  |  Page 118  |  Page 119  |  Page 120  |  Page 121  |  Page 122  |  Page 123  |  Page 124  |  Page 125  |  Page 126  |  Page 127  |  Page 128  |  Page 129  |  Page 130  |  Page 131  |  Page 132