Beyond The Hills: Traversing The North East Foodscape

The coiling road from Guwahati—now just a direct flight away from most metro cities—was a dizzying ascent, aided by the visibly confident cab driver. Not rash, but alert; aware of stray bikes cutting in and trucks labouring up the bends. I had been waiting to make this trip for years, and as the plains loosened their grip and the climb began toward the Khasi hills, I found myself unable to sit still.

The Brahmaputra’s breadth slowly gave way to layered ridge-lines and drifting clouds. The bends tightened, the air cooled, and somewhere along the way the landscape shifted from river basin to damp pine and red earth. We stopped at a highway shed when the driver insisted, “The pineapples here are the best in the world.” He wasn’t wrong. The fruit — sharp and sweet, dribbled instantaneously. It felt coastal in its brightness, yet I stood eating it under a sky thick with low grey mist and moss-stained stone.

By the time we reached the quiet expanse of Umiam Lake and a luxury resort beside it, the carved, thatched silhouettes of Ri Kynjai, shaped like upturned Khasi boats. The cold wind from the Cherrapunjee-Mawsynram belt settled my excitement into curiosity. My understanding of Khasi food was limited, a memory of fermented pork from elsewhere, and I realised how little I truly knew about the kitchens of these hills. This is where I learnt so much more about the food culture.   

Learning The Language Of The Hills

The hunger for this cuisine was not merely physical. At Ri Kynjai, seated in the terraced wooden-pillared dining room overlooking the scenic lake, the table began to fill with platters of Khasi food—smoke, sharp ferments, and greens that looked almost ornamental. Wicker baskets of fresh herbs were placed between us. I assumed they were decorative.

Chef Niyati Rao reached forward, snapped off a fleshy purple-green leaf and handed it to me. “Taste.” The bite was bright, vegetal, faintly marine. Fish mint. One of the indigenous herbs commonly eaten raw in Khasi households. Here, greens are not garnish; they are part of the architecture of the meal. Plucked and often folded into rice, acting as a refresher to the sharp-tasting meats. 

For Rao and her husband, Sagar Neve, this instinct is precisely what drew them east. Before (partly!) relocating, their work in Mumbai’s fine-dining circuit—including the ingredient-led restaurant Ekaa—had already centred produce and seasonality. But Meghalaya offered something different: proximity. What grows in backyards, what is foraged that morning, what appears in the market still carrying the scents of the hills, spurred a familiar foothold in inspirations.

“What surprised me,” she says, “is how deeply flavourful the food is while still being simple and ingredient-led.” Smoking, fermenting, and slow cooking here are not rediscoveries; they are ancient techniques passed down like heritage.

That continuity reveals itself most clearly in the everyday. Tungtap, a fermented fish chutney, appears unassumingly at many tables. It has all the trappings of the cooking ethos—be it preservation, the local chillies and of course, smoke. It is eaten with meats, vegetables, and even salads. As Ahmedaki Laloo of A’Origins puts it, “People often think Northeast food is all about meats, but we have an abundance of seasonal, vegetarian ingredients.” The cuisine, she suggests, is frequently misunderstood through assumption.

At A’Origins in Lachumiere, Laloo works with smoked fish from the Jaintia Hills, fermented bamboo shoot from Khasi villages and alkaline water karitchi from the Garo Hills, filtered through banana leaf ash to tenderise meat.

Few articulate that context more clearly than Chef Kashmiri Nath, long regarded as a custodian of Assamese cuisine and currently helming the culinary philosophy at Rhino & River Wildlife in Pobitora, Guwahati. In a region where food has often been filtered through a generic “Indian” lens of richness and heavy gravies, she insists on authorship. “Our regional cuisines have always existed with subdued confidence,” she says. The difference today lies in how they are framed.

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At Baan Kaahi, her five-course Assamese tasting menu gives full justice to a certain narrative structure of the cuisine. Dishes such as banana stem salad with perilla seed paste, or dohsyiar khleh, a shredded country chicken salad from the Jaintia Hills, reveal heritage but with an approachable modern lens. The menu becomes a way of understanding Khar, Tenga, Tita, indigenous herbs and fermented foods on their own terms.

The North East remains under-articulated in India’s culinary imagination, as it has relegated itself to not seeking validation. Yet that intact foundation allows space for reinterpretation without illustrious glorification. 

A Broader Conversation Begins In Shillong

There are moments in Shillong that unsettle expectation, even at the level of ingredients. The fat, yellow-green silkworms writhing in shallow steel trays outside Bara Bazaar are not displayed for shock value; they are an integral part of the diet. A few steps away, smoked meats hang in dark rows, dried fish lie beside fresh greens, and vendors move easily between Khasi and Hindi, occasionally something else slipping through.

Walk deeper into the narrow arteries of the market, and Meghalaya feels like a sponge. Trade and migration have long threaded this region toward Thailand, Myanmar, Bangladesh and the southern edges of China. Seafood, mushrooms, bamboo, chillies, and peppercorns all integrate as a natural transgression through a willing passage.

Case in point at Nonna Mei, the city's newest Italian casual dine, here pink and yellow pineapples, intensely sweet and almost floral, are used extensively; sohiong berries turned into vinegar and folded into gelato; Laitkynsew tomatoes balancing acidity and sugar, even Lakadong turmeric finds its way into a Negroni at the bar.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the shift in Shillong’s dining culture has been most visible at the bar counter. When Neve and his team began shaping Shad Skye, an acclaimed new installation at Police Bazaar, the intention was to bring out the beauty of ingredients, this time through drinks. The first menu travelled through the seven Northeastern states and Sikkim. Later came deeper excavations: Yaid Krai, a slow-fermented millet liquor from the Khasi and Jaintia tribes; Bitchi, a smoky fermented rice beer from the Garo hills. This bar today amplifies this candidly, perhaps in a nicely balanced cocktail menu.

Eventfully, the broader beverage conversation extends beyond cocktails. At Radiant Manufacturers, in North Guwahati, CEO and Director Vicky Chand conceptualised Dark Knight whisky with the regional palate in mind. Corn was selected as the base grain for its smoother, slightly sweeter profile—one that resonates strongly with consumers in Assam—and for the rounded mouthfeel it delivers. As is with the plethora of fruit-based wines, ranging from pineapples to bayberry (Sohphie) and black cherries (Sohiong), forming a staple and unique draw to locals and tourists alike.

Recognition has followed. At Rynsan Shillong, recently ranked among India’s top restaurants, owner and culinary director Hammarsing L. Kharhmar views the moment as validation. “Our cuisine is an integral part of our culture,” he says. “This national attention helps draw focus to a landscape long overlooked.” Diners — local and visiting — are increasingly curious. Traditional foods, once confined to homes, now appear in structured menus.

Neve's newest chapter also unfolds in the form of Slasha, a young tea garden grown on unexhausted earth. Altitude, forest cover and rainfall make for the perfect combination for some exceptional teas, “with tea,” he reflects, “there is very little you can hide behind.” No reinterpretation, no fancy terminology. From Oolong and Bai Mu Dan to Green and a deeply aromatic Black tea — the latter plucked during Brahma Muhurta, in that still pre-dawn hour, easily spelling peace. The ambition isn’t to create another luxury label, but to allow Meghalaya’s still-unmapped tea landscape to stand on its own terms.  

I arrived thinking I was travelling to a distant edge of India. The little I was privy to, that idea quietly dissolved. The hills were never waiting to be discovered. They were simply continuing—and this time, we happened to be listening.