Absent: Indian cuisine

Restaurant magazine’s list of the world’s 50 best restaurants comes as close to being the definitive listing as you could get, with a panel of judges drawn from all sections of the industry.

The 2011 list will be discussed for months to come — Noma, Rene Redzepi’s incandescent reworking of Nordic food in a converted Copenhagen warehouse, tops the list, as expected; the omission of Ferran Adria’s El Bulli (on the grounds that Adria will be closing the restaurant this year) caused much comment. Peru (Astrid Y Gaston) and Russia (Varvary) make the list for the first time; Europe scores over 30 restaurants, more than any other continent; Canada is left out in the cold, and old favourites — The Fat Duck, Alinea, Per Se, Daniel — are joined by Hong Kong’s Amber and Mexico’s Pujol.

Notice the absence of Indian restaurants on the list? This may be in part because of the dominance of European cuisine; it’s not easy for chefs or food critics steeped in the mores of classic French or Italian cuisine to understand the intricacies of Asian cuisine — and yet, some 20 years after they were dismissed as noodle bars and sushi chefs were derided for merely slicing raw fish, Asian restaurants from Nobu to Momofuko have made their mark. Many more — Hakkasan, Tetsuya’s — have made it into the top 100, just missing the top 50. But Indian cuisine hasn’t made it, and only one restaurant located in India is represented—Wasabi, Morimoto’s attempt to bring his signature, classic cuisine to first the Taj in Mumbai and then Delhi.

Wasabi more than deserves its spot; the quiet, stark décor belies the richness of the sashimi, and the gorgeous teppenyaki counter are always consistent, both in the Delhi and the flagship Mumbai restaurants. The fish is still, as far as I know, flown in from Tokyo’s legendary Tsukiji fish market; the service has always been friendly and knowledgeable. But why aren’t there more Indian restaurants in either this list, or in, say, the Michelin guide?

Suvir Saran’s Devi, which reinvented Indian food in New York by introducing lightly fried strips of okra (now a staple fusion Indian garnish), or salmon in a delicate fennel-infused sauce, won and lost its Michelin star after a brilliant first year gave way to a few wobbly ones. Benares and Tamarind have their Michelin stars, as does Amaya, but at the risk of being decapitated by a cleaver-wielding chef, much of the new Indian fusion cuisine is beginning to seem almost tediously familiar, and very little of it has been startlingly original.

The best thing chefs have accomplished is to make the traditional classics less heavy, to strip away the varnish of excessive, competing masalas in order to highlight just one or two complex notes. But much of the new Indian cuisine seems to have generated its own set of clichés — the chaat tokri, miniature idlis, foie gras Awadh-style, the trios of kulfis mimicking sorbet trios. This is not to diminish the kind of intelligence and innovation pioneering chefs like Tamarind’s Alfred Prasad or Varq’s Hemant Oberoi display; Tamarind was perhaps one of the first London restaurants to work so hard on creating and polishing great fish recipes and Varq’s playfulness is always refreshing.

But for all the brilliance and majesty of traditional Indian cooking, and the versatility of the new fusion techniques, there hasn’t yet been an Indian version of Noma or The Fat Duck, or even a French Laundry. In the next column, we’ll look at why there hasn’t been an Indian Adria or Boulud yet, and what it would take to get there.

Nilanjana S Roy is a Delhi-based writer