India's top chefs are hacking our senses with the art of culinary misdirection, and we're not complaining
From savoury broths that taste like tea to wasabi peas in pani puri, India’s top chefs are using memory and texture to rewire the way we taste.
What if your brain tasted the dish before your tongue ever did?
At Luv in Mumbai, Chef Akash Deshpande serves a pork broth infused with lemongrass and ginger. It arrives in a teacup, steaming, fragrant—eerily reminiscent of masala chai. Diners hesitate, confused but intrigued. Their brain reaches for the familiar before the palate can intervene. Of course, there’s no tea in it. But the warmth, the spice, and the cup itself nudge the mind into believing a story it already knows.
This is what a growing number of India’s chefs are mastering—not deception, but sensory storytelling. Across India, a shift is underway in how flavour is constructed. Chefs are exploring not just what a dish tastes like, but how it’s perceived, when it hits, and why it lingers. Welcome to a new sensory language—where umami is weaponised, textures are inverted, and aroma is treated like emotional bait. It’s science, yes, but also memory, mischief, and meticulous design.
In a world where dining is increasingly as visual and emotional as it is gustatory, these chefs are turning food into sleights of hand. They aren't just cooking—they're composing.
Bite-sized flashbacks
Some flavours feed the stomach. Others feed memory. At Comorin, for Chef Dhiraj Dargan, memory isn’t used for sentimentality—it’s used structurally. His Mawa Mishri Parantha began as a tribute to his mother’s shakkar paranthas, sweet flatbreads traditionally made during the winter. But instead of copying them outright, he rebuilt the dish around the idea of post-meal comfort. “We used jaggery in the dough and added mishri to mimic that moment after lunch when we’d eat a few sugar crystals as dessert,” he says. It’s a dish that feels familiar, texturally and emotionally.
At Luv, Deshpande uses memory as a kind of sensory shortcut. “Even something as simple as serving broth in a teacup makes it richer,” he says. “It primes the brain with warmth and comfort before the first sip. That changes the entire experience.” It’s not nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake—it’s calibration. Precision memory engineering.
Chef Lakhan Jethani of Mizu believes it’s not about recreating a dish, but evoking a trace of memory. “Sometimes you taste something and can’t quite place it—then you realise it’s something you loved growing up,” he says. “That recognition hits, and suddenly you feel more for the dish.”
Crunch, then clarity
When flavour is predictable, texture becomes the terrain of disruption. At Gaijin, Chef Anand Morwani leans heavily into texture as a form of sensory misdirection. His Not Buff Carpaccio comes plated like a spring roll: crisp gyoza shell, parmesan crust, sushi rice and tartare hidden inside. The tongue anticipates softness, but the bite delivers a crack. “Texture adds structure to something that otherwise feels raw and delicate,” he says. “It’s the moment when the dish flips from what you expect into what it actually is. That flip is the fun part.”
Even at Comorin, where the ethos is more rooted than performative, texture remains a crucial tool. “In our Dahi Batata Puri, we added wasabi peas alongside the wasabi potato mix,” says Dargan. “Without that contrast, it would just be a single-texture experience. Every bite has to have play.” Chef Jethani at Mizu plays a similar note. “I serve tuna tartare cold, with warm bread. That kind of contrast creates a pause. It slows the bite down. It makes people notice.”
Depth over drama
Behind every “wow” dish lies a blueprint—layered, deliberate, and rich in umami. Umami is often described as the fifth taste, but among chefs, it’s better understood as the spine of satisfaction. “It’s the language that speaks across cuisines,” says Morwani. His Kataifi Scallops are a textbook example: miso-marinated scallops, wrapped in crispy pastry, plated with dashi beurre blanc, truffled corn purée and a sesame-bell pepper sauce. Each element is engineered to build depth and release in waves.
At Comorin, umami is used as a problem-solver. When their Haleem recipe felt flat, tomatoes were added—not for acidity, but for their glutamates. “It gave us balance and richness,” says Dargan. “It became the missing piece.” Chef Deshpande puts it more poetically: “When someone eats a dish I’ve made, I want it to hit like a heartbeat—a straight line from first bite to last. No spikes. No gaps. Just a clean, inevitable pulse of flavour.” For him, umami isn’t just depth—it’s control.
Looks like dessert, tastes like a plot twist
Aromas, then, become suggestion machines, and colour, a kind of edible theatre. Chef Lakhan Jethani has built entire dishes around visual and olfactory mischief. His Matcha Tiramisu arrives looking exactly like a cup of tea—frothy, green, delicate. Many diners attempt to sip it before realising it’s actually cake layered inside a painted chocolate cup. “We hand-paint the outer shell to mimic ceramic,” he says. “And when it’s cut open, there’s mascarpone chantilly, sponge, boba—all hidden in plain sight.” The reveal is almost cinematic.
At KOKO, Chef Eric Sifu’s Tender Coconut Carpaccio transforms a familiar ingredient into something almost abstract. “We sliced it thin, added a ponzu-style sauce, and finished it with garnishes,” he says. “It created something fresh and unexpected—something that makes diners pause and guess how we achieved this texture and flavour.” His dumplings, often mistaken for meat-based thanks to their sear and structure, are built from seitan and slow-cooked tofu. “People don’t expect that kind of richness from tofu,” he notes. “It’s about layering flavour so it behaves like something else.”
These cues aren’t random. They’re strategic. A dish that smells roasted but tastes cold, or looks savoury but finishes sweet, forces the brain to recalibrate. Chef Morwani describes it as a “quiet kind of mischief”—that pause before a bite, where the brain tries to catch up. It’s in this gap between assumption and reality that flavour hacking does its most interesting work.
Flavour hacking isn’t a gimmick—it’s a philosophy. One that respects the intelligence of the diner, while also delighting in their momentary confusion. It’s what happens when chefs stop thinking only about taste and start thinking about sensation. When aroma is used to recall a memory, when texture tells a joke, when a cup of cake masquerades as tea.
In this world, cooking is part science, part theatre, part memory work. And when done well, it doesn’t just taste good. It makes you feel something. Because sometimes, the most unforgettable flavours aren’t the ones you recognise. They’re the ones that trick you into remembering.
Lead image: Luv Restaurant
Also read: How classic Indian summer staples are getting a gourmet makeover
