From ‘mahua' to ‘palash', chefs plate up the forest for fine dining menus
Rituparna Roy The Wild Food Festival 2025 edition has chefs experimenting with India's wild produce in the most creative ways Mutton ribs with wild green risotto at Slink & Bardot, Mumbai. Gift this article
Picture these dishes. A yakhni reimagined with kantola or teasel gourd. A sticky toffee pudding glazed with mahua jaggery caramel. A risotto cooked with foraged wild greens.
Picture these dishes. A yakhni reimagined with kantola or teasel gourd. A sticky toffee pudding glazed with mahua jaggery caramel. A risotto cooked with foraged wild greens.
It's not everyday that some of the country's top chefs spotlight ingredients deeply rooted in the culinary culture of India's forest communities. In the process, they are also making these wild foods fun and relevant for the urban diner. The effort is part of a larger initiative of the Wild Food Festival, to highlight the significance of India's wild produce, and understand their complex relationship with the ecosystem. The seventh edition of the one-day festival is scheduled to be held on 23 August in Mumbai. Also Read | What India cooks during the monsoon
Since its inception in 2018 by OOO Farms, an agricultural project that works with farming communities in Gujarat and Maharashtra, the festival has managed to build a dialogue around food security and nutrition deficiency in the country. In 2022, it was joined by The Locavore, a platform that champions India's diverse regional food culture through storytelling and advocacy. 'The idea behind partnering with restaurants and professional chefs is to extend the conversation beyond the one-day festival. It is also a great way to showcase innovations and creativity with these wild ingredients across cuisines and formats," says chef Thomas Zacharias, the founder of The Locavore. Around 10 restaurants from Mumbai and Pune are part of the endeavour this year, and has seen chefs travelling to Palghar in Maharashtra to understand how the adivasi communities forage and cook with raanbhaji, or the uncultivated monsoon produce of the region. Kashmiri thali at Folk, Mumbai.
For chef and restaurateur Jasleen Marwah, who is known for her expertise in Kashmiri cuisine, the challenge was to present the ingredients in a restaurant format. 'Considering most of the produce is bitter or sour, I zeroed in on a Kashmiri thali, so all I had to do was find the correct vegetable to match the flavour profile of the dishes," says Marwah, who helms Folk, a restaurant specialising in regional Indian food in Mumbai. The menu features a classic dum aloo cooked with a vegetable called pendhra, a yakhni with teasel gourd, and batter-fried akkarghoda, a wild fern that mimics nadru or lotus stem.
After multiple trials, chef Ali Akbar Baldiwala has come up with six dishes for the wild food menu this month at the restaurant Slink & Bardot in Mumbai. Known for his playful renditions of global favourites using local ingredients, he has recreated a kimchi noodle salad with wild bamboo shoots, a Vietnamese dish called Bo La Lot or chicken skewers with fatangadi leaves (similar to betel leaf), fish parcels grilled in palash (the flame of the forest tree) leaves, a take on the Parsi patra ni machi, and a risotto using forest greens. 'Diners tend to find the protein-forward dishes more relatable. But the others need a bit of prodding. I am hopeful we will get there," he says. Kartoli or teasel gourd salad at Malaka Spice, Pune.
The festival also allows restaurants to drive the conversation around local sourcing. 'As chefs we routinely cook with zucchini, asparagus and artichokes, but tend to overlook vegetables that are indigenous to our country," says Ilvika Chandawarkar, who handles research and business development at Pune's Malaka Spice restaurant. Although wild foods require meticulous processing, as some of them contain alkaloids, and need to be cooked with a souring agent, "it's not very different when chefs cook with say enoki mushrooms for the first time. They are not native to India, right?" she points out. Chandawarkar has incorporated wild bamboo, teasel gourd, loth, a type of tuber with stalks and pendhra into her Asian-inspired menu.
If there is one ingredient that has caught on the hyperlocal food trend, it is the mahua (or mahura), considered to be the crown jewel of the tribal food culture. It is the 'tree of life', and provides food, fodder and fuel to the indigenous communities living across the tribal belt of India. From cocktails to desserts, chefs are now drawn in by its nuanced flavour profile. For the festival, chef Nikhil Menon is serving a Japanese-style ice-cream sando made of shokupan bread at Mizu Izakaya in Mumbai this month. Inspired by mahua roti, a staple among the forest dwellers, it is a textural delight complete with a sauce made of mahua nectar, honey and white shoyu, and butter toasted mahua. Mahua sticky toffee pudding at Maska Bakery, Mumbai.
'I have always been fascinated by the folklore surrounding mahua, and how it is seen as a matriarchal figure. The fact that it is super seasonal makes it more special," says chef Heena Punwani, who runs Maska Bakery in Mumbai, and first encountered the flowers in 2019 during her stint at The Bombay Canteen. She has crafted two warm desserts (available via Maska bakery Airmenus this month) keeping the monsoon season in mind — cinnamon rolls layered with mahua butter, and a sticky toffee pudding with mahua and dates. Punwani takes them up a notch by roasting the flowers in ghee and turning them into a caramel for a sticky and chewy mouthfeel. The possibilities are truly endless. Also Read | Come rains, and it's time for 'shevala'
The Wild Food Festival 2025 will be held on Saturday, 23 August 2025, at Bunts Sangha Mumbai, (opposite RPH College), Chunabhatti, Kurla, Mumbai - 400070. Topics You May Be Interested In Catch all the Business News, Market News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on Live Mint. Download The Mint News App to get Daily Market Updates.
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