India’s food and dining culture is in the middle of a transformation. It is as much about identity and storytelling as it is about restaurants and recipes. From queuing in the rain for a dosa to booking tables three weeks in advance for tasting menus, Indians are dining out with new passion and purpose. On the global stage, too, Indian restaurants and bars are rewriting what the world thinks of our cuisine.
It’s against this backdrop that Smitha Menon’s podcast Big Food Energy has struck a chord. A seasoned food journalist, Menon has spent over 15 years chronicling the rise of India’s restaurants, chefs, and culinary entrepreneurs. With her podcast, she finally gets to do something that other mediums often don’t allow: let conversations breathe.
When Big Food Energy debuted, Menon imagined it would appeal mainly to people within the food and beverage industry. The first season reflected that focus: technical conversations about funding, setting up restaurants, and the mechanics of running a bar.
But something unexpected happened. Listeners outside the food world tuned in, entrepreneurs, curious eaters, and anyone who wanted to understand what makes the business of food tick. India’s growing food audience craved more than recipes; they wanted stories of vision, grit, and innovation.
Guests in season 2 include some of the most exciting voices shaping the future of Indian dining—restaurateurs like like Chef Himanshu Saini of Trèsind Studio, the Olive Group’s AD Singh and Impresario’s Riyaaz Amlani, Chef Chintan Pandya and CEO Roni Mazumdar of Unapologetic Foods (New York’s Semma and Dhamaka), and Swiggy Foods’ CEO Rohit Kapoor. What connects them? A shared mission to redefine how India eats—and how the world eats Indian food.
Excerpts from a chat.
You’ve been interviewing chefs and restaurateurs for years. How does the podcast change the dynamic for you?
A: In print, you often speak to someone for a trend story or a feature story for about half an hour and end up using just two or three lines of that entire conversation. But the podcast lets me go deeper into the journeys, challenges, and inspirations of people I’ve admired for years. It’s not about extracting a quote for a feature, but about exploring ideas, inspirations, and even tangents that don’t fit into a headline. I’ve always felt that entire conversation has sometimes been interesting, and I learned so much from these conversations, and now there’s finally space for that to come through.
Q: What guides your choice of guests?
A: There’s always some timeliness involved, but I also look for people who can reveal something unexpected with their unique stories. Season Two almost unconsciously became about championing Indian food culture, both at home and abroad. I realised mid-season that there was a loose thread: people redefining Indian food and how it’s perceived globally. I try to draw out facets of people we don’t usually see.
With Chef Saransh Goila, for example, instead of focusing on his journey as a creator or about Goila Butter Chicken, we talked about how he’s been able to scale Goila Butter Chicken to be able to sell it. and how he uses his personality as a chef/creator to do different things. For me, it was a completely different side to Saransh.
I had Akhil Iyer of Benne Bombay and Kavan Kuttappa of Naru Noodle Bar on one episode. On the surface, dosa and ramen don’t belong in the same conversation, but both are hyper-specialised dining concepts focused on just one or two dishes. The parallels were fascinating, and that’s the kind of freshness I wanted in these conversations.
Q: How did the podcast evolve from Season 1 to Season 2?
A: Season One was more technical, about funding, setting up restaurants, the business mechanics. I thought only industry people would listen. But I was surprised to see a much wider audience tuning in. With Season Two, the idea was to make these stories accessible. I’m not the “expert”; I’m the curious food nerd asking questions that bridge insider knowledge and wider curiosity.
I also found that India-specific stories and episodes led by chefs or restaurateurs tend to perform better. That was a learning from Season One that I doubled down on. For a long time, there was an inferiority complex associated with our food. Today, however, I feel like there’s a cultural confidence about documenting and telling stories about our food. Our cuisine is complex, refined, and sophisticated. Indian chefs and restaurateurs are building movements.
Were there insights that surprised even you?
A: Absolutely. Roni from Unapologetic Foods in New York told me how Indian restaurants abroad struggle to hire staff because of the perception that Indian diners don’t tip well. It comes from a perception that Indians are vegetarian, Indians don’t drink, and Indians have very sweet desserts, so the number of desserts they order for a table will be fewer.
That therefore impacts the tip that a server can make in New York. So servers feel like it makes more sense to work for another restaurant that serves another kind of cuisine. That blew my mind; it’s such a layered intersection of culture, economics, and bias. Another example was speaking with Vinesh Johny about how fatherhood reshaped his perspective on hospitality and running a business. These are sides of people you don’t always get to see in traditional interviews.
Q: For those just tuning in, what can they expect in the upcoming episodes?
A: Expect insights on how India is eating and drinking, but also how entrepreneurs are building businesses around that. How do we value things in terms of different food cultures? For anyone interested in food and drink, there’s a whole bunch of subjects we explore.
For example, I had an interesting conversation with Anisha from Goya and Priya Krishna from The New York Times. They spoke about how restaurant reviews are different in America and in India, how it’s structured and also about all of our pet peeves about food media. It’s about getting up close with the people shaping our food culture.
