It started out with roasting slabs of meat, sans spice, over a fire. Since then cooking has come a long way and aren’t we glad! From spicy chillies to tangy lemons, a dash of this and a pinch of that, the art of blending spices to get the perfect mouth watering taste. Cooking is now an art form in itself. The latest cuisine to hit metropolitan cities is South East Asian cuisine.  To be specific – South East Asian cuisine refers to dishes originating from Thailand which spread to Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos and Malaysia. South East Asian cuisine originally was thought of peasant food due to the inexpensive spices used then.  It consists of the staple rice and noodles followed by curries which implement coconut milk, yoghurt, mint, basil, etc.

Metropolitan cities like Bangalore has seen upsurge in restaurants opening which specialise/offer traditional South East Asian cuisine. There has been an increase of 15-23% per cent in the number of restaurants opening up offering a variety of exotic Southeast Asian Cuisines.

JustEat.in, pioneer of online food portal in India, comments on this trend “ Restaurants like Beyond China, Indira nagar, Grab Eat, Koramangala, Suziewong Restaurant, Delhi, or Your Plate, Gurgaon, see a great demand throughout the week from age groups between 25-35 years. The top selling dishes in these restaurants are the Thai Curry and Tom Yum soup, and you will find a large number of people ordering in from these restaurants almost 2- 3 times in a week. “

Restaurants these days want to stand out from the existing crop of Pan-Asian eateries and to compete with mom-and-pop joints; more and more restaurants are opting for concept restaurants or serving authentic cuisines such as Vietnamese cuisine, Cantonese cuisine etc. To make these dishes more palatable to the Indian audiences, many restaurants add an Indian twist.