How A Hidden Mumbai Restaurant Is Changing Indian Cuisine - Masque, India

Nestled within one of Mumbai’s old textile mills, Masque is an ingredient-driven restaurant co-owned by Chef Prateek Sadhu and entrepreneur Aditi Dugar. The restaurant’s 10-course chef’s tasting menus - a first of its kind in India – marry tradition and innovation; as the seasons change, so do the menus, defined by ingredients from the restaurant’s farm, foraging trips, and a network of local farmers.

The food at Masque stems from the team’s sustained efforts to give platform to local ingredients and extract maximum flavour from the wealth of Indian produce – a promise that’s been doubled down on with the addition of the new Masque Lab, the restaurant’s R&D and test kitchen that opened in 2020.

At Masque, modern Indian food isn’t about returning to regional recipes and simply plating them with new tweaks. It demands revisiting traditional cooking and ingredients with purpose, and discovering ways in which these can build cross-cultural bridges. Local flavours and age-old practices meet innovation and technique, overcoming an often-homogenized definition of “Indian food” to re-imagine a new wave of modern Indian cuisine.