Peak Tasting Menu Life
Performative fine dining is having a moment. But sophisticated foodies and top chefs have already moved on, as new entrants focus on prettiness and spectacle
By Anoothi Vishal
Of late, I have been to a few “fine dining” restaurants opened by restaurateurs more conversant with bars or casual formats and heard from them the same statement of ambition. “We’ve earned the money, but we now want to do something more prestigious/quality.” It is a good sentiment, but unfortunately, in real life, with a lack of all round understanding of what fine dining is or a tasting menu should be, this is how it usually works:
The formats feature a pretty place, or one done up ostentatiously, but photogenic. An emphasis on presentations — say, fryums topped with avocado, some kind of tartare, or caviar served on designer ware such as mini slotted spoons, porcelain branches, small plates, ceremonious pourings of jus on something, Insta-friendly one-bites, even sometimes smoke and liquid nitrogen from the molecular era etc etc. Nothing tastes of anything. But the ambitious restaurant still rolls out a tasting menu (!) — with elaborate story-telling decorating a line-up of small portions that test your endurance. After a few months, despite the orchestrated buzz, when people murmur about the disappointing food and “experience” inevitably, the city’s palate gets blamed; because of course, while every aspiring genius Indian chef thinks he is a Gaggan Anand and every restaurant wants to have the social influence of Masque, Indian Accent, Zuma, Cipriani… when things go wrong, it is always easiest to blame customers who are not evolved enough! Meanwhile, two years of an unacknowledged flop later, with a lot of money spent on marketing to prop up the business that is no longer about the food, you may find the restaurant pivoting to add a money-spinning bar and casual eats, with the fine world coming a full circle!
This is a script that has been playing out for the last few years, particularly in Delhi-NCR, where glamour outstrips taste and it is difficult to recco too many restaurants apart from the old faithfuls that you can take people out to or go to on special occasions and be assured of a fine meal and not just a fine location and finer prices!
Despite being the lowest growing segment withing the Indian restaurantscape, fine dining with its tasting menus is at a peak moment in India– with many diners and operators seeking social prestige this segment offers — on social media, and by way of the many impressive sounding global lists in emulation of Michelin or 50 Best achievements. But this is dining reduced to performance. Deeply unsatisfying, and the antithesis of what social dining within restaurants should be — that leaves you with closer bonds, good taste, and some wonder or amusement.
Let’s break down this segment further:
Fine dining is the lowest growing segment within the Indian restaurant scape: According to some data I have from the Gurgaon based management consultancy The Knowledge Company, of 2,79,770 restaurants in the organised segment in India in 2025, slated to grow at a CAGR of 13.5 per cent from 2025 to 2030, there are just 800 fine dining restaurants, with just .9 per cent market share in 2025, growing at just 4.6 per cent per annum till 2030.
Most top restaurants and chefs not just in India but globally are in fact moving away from performative fine dining. Globally, as the “IRL” (In Real Life) economy takes off, diners are seeking more real food and more authenticity in restaurants by way of their origin stories and the kind of food luxury restaurants are serving (representing a region, historical moment, a community or even a family). I was in Dubai just before the war had started in spring this year, and even in the city known earlier as a glitzy centre for splashy luxury, the best and most feted and awarded restaurants had some solid food; impressive because of taste and not performance. Similarly, if you see global food capitals such as London and New York, where Indian fine dining is having a moment, you will see almost every restaurant of any note put out hearty flavours. The era of nondescript tasting menus is over.
In India, in Mumbai and Delhi and even in Goa, the three cities with the highest concentration of upscale restaurants, the definite trend towards a more wholesome-but-elevated dining is pretty perceptible. Chef Manish Mehrotra’s Nisaba is a relief from fake fine-ness that good food and better restaurants do not need. The other Delhi (and now in Gurgaon) restaurant that I have liked lately has been Nadoo where Chef Shri Bala’s meticulous approach to regional south Indian food is the star, supported by smart restaurateuring by Sahil Sambhi. In Goa, even Assagao, cluttered with Mumbai and Delhi restaurants and bars with no Goa authenticity, is moving towards better regional food. I am told Priyank Sukheja’s Avadhi restaurant Kesar Bagh where the chef is Azaan Qureshi, the son of the stalwart Ghulam Qureshi (of Dum Pukht), has sincere kakori and dum dishes. And earlier this year, I had gone to Moira, where chef Rahul Gomes Pereira aka Picu has done superb middle-eastern food with touches of Goa at the gorgeous Mister Merchant’s at Club Solene housed in a 200-year-old house. In Mumbai, it is casual restaurants or elevated casual restaurants that have drawn the most sophisticated diners, whether it is Americano, The Table or brunches at Paradox, which has high quality, easy-going, gourmet food.
This is the kind of food that is in fact modern “fine dining”. Something that doesn’t try too hard to impress but is high quality in its cooking, ingredients and therefore taste. The restaurant formats that sophisticated diners are now going to are in between casual and traditionally fine. You will still dress up to go here, the wine and cocktail lists are clean, quality and make you feel stylish, but the food is the star, with both ease and flair. In fact, evolved diners are making occasions of any sort of dining formats when the food is the star— whether it is by way of home supper clubs, small takeaway joints serving “authentic” and hard to come by legacy dishes (I found nargisi kofte at Dawat-e-Avadh, a tiny restaurant in Green Park in the Upahar Complex, and am told that people are now sending their drivers to pick up the food for parties at home), and at casual restaurants such as the superb Madras Kitchen in Bangalore, part of the Marriott Executive Apartments but opening into a mall, modestly priced, but with one of the best menus I have tasted since Dakshin Chennai.
On the other hand, audiences that were hitherto not too interested in fancy restaurant dining, Gen Z who populate and consume social media heavily, and diners in smaller towns who perhaps aspire to big city and global dining tropes, are now the sections being targeted by a whole lot of nouveau restaurants copying “fine dining” visually from other established players. These restaurants are obviously looking at a newer public but also perhaps hope to win accolades for breaking new ground – except that it is not new ground. Because in every “fine dining” menu that I see today in Indian restaurants, I can detect derivative and borrowed presentation styles— whether it is popsicles on sticks on a stand, or corn aerated, pureed, dehydrated, or a preponderance of cassava, beetroot not to mention cheese and avocado in the plates, or salmon and tuna carpaccio and tartare put inside tart shells, on tiny plates, or ice cream cones filled with savoury aerations. It is an endless procession of mediocrity with no original thought or taste. Worse, most restaurants and chefs, are not even getting the cooking right—caught up as they are in form.
If “moreish” flavours are dominating the most sophisticated restaurants, tiny food and tasting menus are now proliferating across middling ones. Tasting menus sometimes have a point and work. I have never been more entertained than at Gaggan’s theatre in Bangkok. It must be mandatory for chefs and restaurateurs to bag a seat at that restaurant or a few other such globally before thinking that they can pull off a performance like that. Because a tasting menu is a performance. To pull it off, you need a chef with a philosophy, a point of view, total control over his skills in the kitchen and a personality that is riveting. It would be impossible for everyone to have that. Which is why, these menus should only be few and far between. And why restaurants must steer clear of them if they truly want to be dubbed fine dining and not wannabe.
Another question that I am always asked is why are there such few “good” restaurants in Delhi? By consumers of luxury. My theory is this: With more ambition, more access to capital and with an audience more ready to splurge of aspirational novelty, there is no dearth of entrepreneurs wanting to be purveyors of luxury experiences. But without full understanding of the business, they invest silently in fine dining formats that manufacture buzz. If a restaurant manages to get long term customers on the basis of that, it does make a lot of money in the short run, and then expires around the two-year mark, at which point, the buzz too has died. It is then sold off or rejigged as another similar place and then the cycle begins afresh. But there is no brand to be built and no lasting business, I would imagine. It is undoubtedly a fraught operation with many grey areas and whether ultimately it leads to any sort of wealth for a restaurateur is questionable.
One insider of the F&B revealed to me about how a currently in-demand restaurant in Delhi is said to be doing an astounding business of Rs 2-3 crore per month in revenue. A luxury restaurant that may have around Rs 6-7 crore as investment, may thus recover its money within a year or so. But this is an exceptional scenario, and may work if both the food and drinks and “experience” manage to bring in repeat customers in a restaurant that has at least 100 covers. Most restaurants are 1. smaller 2. Full only on weekends 3. Out-competed on buzz and price by newer entrants. Let’s do some math: At an average per cover of Rs 3000, for 100 customers, for about 20 days in a month, a fine dining restaurant may make a revenue of Rs 60,00,000 a month. Even if the profit is 20-30 per cent of this, which in fine dining restaurants is much less, the profit per year, may be Rs 2 crore or such roughly, and may take around 3-3.5 years to recover investment. This is a rough calculation from a non-math background person. A fine dining restaurant therefore would need to run profitability for about 3-4 years at least— unless subsidised by a very popular bar. Most don’t last that long, run out of funds, buzz and sell or change formats.
For the hapless diner, on the other hand, it is definitely a lose-lose. We are left with no really reliable restaurants that we can plan an evening around with friends, family and fun, where we can manage to enjoy society and conversation without questioning the return on our investment of money, but also time and certainly needless calories!
