From trotters to tripe, offal gets an upscale makeover

Mint

27-06-2025

Rituparna Roy Borne out of necessity, nose-to-tail eating as a culinary practice traces its roots to ancient civilisations. The dishes and their fascinating stories are inspiring chefs to reinterpret them for the modern diner, be it from personal memories or research trips across the country 'Dohjem' liver pâté by Tanisha Phanbuh; (right) 'Golda chingri ghilu' hollandaise at Sienna.
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Bengali mothers are adept at coaxing their children into eating every part of the fish. 'Chew the heads, they're good for you", 'eat the tel (innards), they are delicious", 'don't discard the skins, they have good fats", and so on. 'My mother cooks macher tel like a mishmash with vegetables, and it's something I cannot have enough of even today," says head chef Avinandan Kundu, who reimagines his mother's recipe in the form of dolma, the stuffed leaf parcels believed to have originated during the Ottoman times, at Sienna in Kolkata. The restaurant, known for its playful approach to Bengal's diverse food culture, offers small plates and bar bites featuring fish and meat offal.
Bengali mothers are adept at coaxing their children into eating every part of the fish. 'Chew the heads, they're good for you", 'eat the tel (innards), they are delicious", 'don't discard the skins, they have good fats", and so on. 'My mother cooks macher tel like a mishmash with vegetables, and it's something I cannot have enough of even today," says head chef Avinandan Kundu, who reimagines his mother's recipe in the form of dolma, the stuffed leaf parcels believed to have originated during the Ottoman times, at Sienna in Kolkata. The restaurant, known for its playful approach to Bengal's diverse food culture, offers small plates and bar bites featuring fish and meat offal.
Borne out of necessity, nose-to-tail eating as a culinary practice traces its roots to ancient civilisations. In India, it is prevalent across various communities with home cooks displaying their ingenuity via recipes passed down through generations. While offal is treated as a delicacy among many cultures, it often gets a bad rap here, primarily because of taste, texture and cultural stigma. The dishes and their fascinating stories are now inspiring chefs to reinterpret them for the modern diner, be it from memory or research trips across the country. Also Read | Hearts and guts
In Mumbai, chef Varun Totlani makes a bone marrow dish spiced with fiery thecha at the cocktail bar Paradox. The theatrics involve guests scooping the marrow out of a buff shank bone that has been cut length-wise. 'While bheja is more acceptable because of its creamy texture, offal or organ meats as a category require a fair amount of work in fine dining," he says. 'Thecha' spiced bone marrow at Paradox,
Kundu believes in making his food accessible, but not appropriating it. 'The idea is to showcase the nose-to-tail eating culture in Bengal, but also respect the base ingredient. Although Bengalis in Kolkata are not that experimental, the perception is slowly changing," he says.
The team also brings in personal stories of eating offal. 'We all have that one memory of standing with our plates at weddings, contemplating whether to suck out the ghilu (brain matter) from the golda chingri (large freshwater prawns)," he says. At the restaurant, they turn it into a hollandaise, put it back into the prawn heads, grill and serve it with chimichurri. It's a favourite, so are the charred chicken gizzards, and chilli garlic bheja.
At Naar, chef Prateek Sadhu's 16-seater restaurant near Kasauli, the menu is built on four pillars that define Himalayan cuisine, and nose-to-tail eating is one of them (apart from foraging, migration and preservation). He serves a dish featuring Ladakhi gyurma or blood sausages in a silken broth along with sunderkala, a type of hand-rolled millet noodles from Uttarakhand.
While in the National Capital Region, Khasi pop-up chef Tanisha Phanbuh reimagines Meghalaya's classic pork brain salad doh khlieh in the form of crostinis and dohjem, traditionally made of pork intestines and belly, as pâté. 'Working with offal can be a task in Delhi given sourcing off-cuts can be a challenge," says Phanbuh, who has hosted pop-ups at Fig & Maple restaurant and Pullman Hotel in the past under her brand 'Tribal Gourmet'. Liver from the tapas menu at Ekaa.
What excites chefs about offal is the ability to work with various forms and textures. 'Every offal behaves differently at a given temperature. Some can be paste-y, or crunchy like pork ears, and then there is brain, which are like these orbs of buttery ooziness," says chef-partner Niyati Rao of Ekaa in Mumbai. The restaurant has a dish of pork mince using the heart and liver to go with the Sikkimese tingmo bread.
'We take a lot of care to process the offal, with the right kind of spices and techniques, which people finally end up enjoying," she says. At Bombay Daak, her team does a version of Hyderabadi chakna, which is locally prepared with goat tripe, and a bheja dish cooked with anishi, the prized fermented taro leaf cakes from Nagaland.
Inspiration also comes from the comfort and familiarity associated with the ingredient. 'If you have grown up eating offal, you instinctively understand the appeal. For me, it was never considered unusual or exotic," says chef Hussain Shahzad, who believes in highlighting its potential with thoughtful technique. On the Papa's Mumbai menu, he combines lamb tongue, brain, as well as shoulder, neck, and belly to make a French-style terrine, and plates it up with nihari sauce made from lamb trotters and neck bones. 'Some come seeking these dishes, others need a little nudge." Lamb terrine with 'nihari' sauce at Papa's.
In Himalayan households, harvesting an animal means letting go of a valuable farm asset. 'This nose-to-tail approach is deeply rooted in both necessity and respect," says chef Prakriti Lama, who runs the Himalayan-inspired restaurant Across with her husband chef Viraf Patel in Mumbai. The menu has tripe, slow braised with mountain spices such as timur or Himalayan peppercorns, chillies, and foraged herbs like jimbu, but plated with finesse, and pork trotters, 'which have unexpectedly become a guest favourite for their gelatinous texture and deep flavour." The couple consults with restaurants and hosts pop-ups across India, and are proud to have introduced offal into menus, be it as bar snacks or elaborate mains.
While chefs believe technique and storytelling can shift diners' reactions, it is exciting to find offal being appreciated for its place in India's food heritage, and that it is no longer disguised but celebrated for its complexity. Also Read | Guts, hearts and lungs in Sicily Topics You May Be Interested In