“I grew up enjoying an indigenous variety of white corn, which isn’t as common,” she explains, placing a dish of Kurdayi (wheat fried in a spiral) in front of me. “Imagine my excitement when I found it two years back in a market from a farmer that originates from the Palghar region [where it grows].” The corn makes an appearance in a sweet miso fermented with corn, scooped with the crisp cracker.

Another creation, made with millet indigenous to Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, is fermented with kashmiri red chilli from Choudhary’s family garden and aged for two years before consumption. Kashmir, where she comes from, is often called the land of saffron, and she turns the spice into her version of a garum with tiger prawn heads.

The bright-eyed chef’s journey started eight years ago, when she first felt the farm-to-table movement and the traceability of ingredients apparent in other cities were missing in Mumbai. “Growing up in Jammu and Kashmir, my father would grow everything from turnips and lemons to mushrooms and strawberries,” she reminisces, smiling. The COO of a media company prior to her foray into the dining scene, she took a chance and opened her first initiative, Sequel, a produce-driven café now attached to Noon.

Three years later, when Choudhary was pregnant, she found herself craving a fermented black carrot drink known as kanji. “It was something my maternal grandmother would make—the first time I consumed it, I was less than a year old,” she chuckles. “She had a huge influence on me growing up and is where I draw my love for ferments from,” Choudhary recalls how her grandmother would make over 40 different kinds of achar, fermented in the sun with mustard oil, her favourite being one typically consumed in the winter made of carrots and turnips.

Soon after, Noon was born, rooted in the idea of borrowing from the past to create a space that is truly progressive. “So much culinary wealth lies within our indigenous communities, and it will die with them if we do not document and translate it,” she says. “As chefs, we narrate the story of culture, ingredients, and knowledge, and it is our role to uplift the communities we owe our rich food history to.”

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To better understand this, she goes on regular foraging trips with tribal communities, one of them a network of 35 different female farmers. “These women are in their seventies and eighties, and it is the first time they are economically independent,” she smiles. We go foraging three to four times a year, between Spring and Autumn, to find ingredients not seen in the mainstream Indian dining scene that now appear in our ferments.” Such ingredients include wild garlic, wild caraway, and rutabaga.

In Maharashtra, she also works with the Sahyadri tribal community to forage ingredients such as mahua flowers, which make an appearance in a rice pancake course at Noon, after fermenting for almost a year. “This is still Indian food,” she says. “Just not how we know it.”

During my trip, I am fortunate to follow Choudhary to the traditional Koliwada fishing village, home to the oldest inhabitants of Mumbai. Men in the fishermen community are involved in catching fish—we see them chatting happily as they detach the day’s catch from the net—while women collect the yield to sell in the nearby market. We venture out on a boat and are privy to a local species, Bombay duck, being caught.

“Bombay duck used to be transported in a mail train, which is how it got its name, as daak means mail in Bengali, but the word duck was popularised by the British,” grins Gauri Devidayal, a respected figure in the Indian restaurant scene, best known for her restaurant, The Table. Sadly, with rampant industrialisation, the community has to fish further and further away from the shore, due to pollution and disturbances.

Back at Noon, we enjoy a traditional home-style Koli seafood lunch prepared by Noon service manager Divya Patil’s mother, who originates from the community. Teary-eyed upon serving her food, she explains how women are valued for their cooking skills and feel overwhelmed cooking at such an establishment. With Choudhary and her daughter’s encouragement, she continues, chuckling as she reminisces about how the first question her in-laws asked her was about what she was able to cook.

The lunch itself is delicious, and I have never tasted such fresh seafood, from fried silver pomfret and Bombay duck coated with semolina to tiger prawns in tomato and onion gravy. “All fish caught by the community are sold or consumed the same morning, they never have fish that is more than a day old,” Choudhary explains. She tells me she finds it fascinating that locals still turn to imported salmon when the community supplies such fresh seafood. “We have everything here, from fish to our own cacao and cheese,” she enthuses.

During my time in Mumbai, I am exposed to her network of industry peers, from Bandra Born’s Manoj Shetty and Gresham Fernandes and Naar’s Prateek Sadhu to anthropologist Kurush Dalal and The Table’s Gauri Devidayal, all key in pushing the Indian dining scene forward. It is clear from my time spent with them the community is more than close—they exude warmth, sing praise for each other, dine together, collaborate, and have the utmost respect for one another. What ties them is their pride and love for their rich local cuisine and a common goal to elevate the local landscape.

One of my favourite dishes that I taste at Noon is a lamb marinated in an apricot, skotse, and priyanku miso, made with a preserve courtesy of another of Choudhary’s industry friends, Kunzes Angmo, who champions Ladakh’s heritage. “Her apricot preserve is made with three ingredients—butter, apricots she picks herself, and sugar—cooked over an open fire,” Choudhary says while adding that Angmo spends time with communities, researches indigenous ingredients, and preserves the history of their forefathers with an exquisite tasting menu. At Noon, Choudhary combines it with wild caraway from Ladakh, wild garlic, wild fern, and koji grown on Sahyadri black rice, fermenting it into an amino sauce that coats the meat.

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While Choudhary has worked with acclaimed restaurants from around the globe (Cenci from Kyoto and Silo from London, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant, to name a few), the one closest to her heart is with chef-nun Jeong Kwan, most recognisable for her role in Chef’s Table. “[Kwan’s] philosophy is so rooted in tradition, and she perceives ferments as a way of life,” she says. Choudhary lived with her in the monastery, three hours from Seoul, South Korea, to understand her ferments, some more than 30 years old. “It is the highlight of my culinary journey and a big moment for India’s culinary scene.”

“Our cuisine is so diverse that it changes every 60 kilometres, and my hope is to take these nuanced micro-cuisines to a global level,” she smiles. Touching on the future, she hopes chefs will find their unique voice, pushing the hyperlocal and hyper seasonal, to push what they believe in: “It is already happening in the industry, which I am so proud to see.” 

She recalls why she started Noon: “We began our fermentation program because we did not want to import a soy sauce or tamari when we can create it ourselves with local ingredients, going beyond conventional dining to truly showcase India on the global map.”

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