How India’s restaurants learned to cook with less

The Hole in the Wall Cafe in Indiranagar, Bengaluru, is a breakfast joint that pulls weekend crowds large enough to spill onto the pavement. Since commercial LPG cylinders crossed Rs 3,000, its kitchen has changed the way it thinks about every flame it lights. “Even if we get one order for a dish, we prepare three and keep it ready,” said Mathew Harris, cofounder. “We know it will sell eventually and this helps us save on gas.”

The complimentary syrup that once came with many breakfast dishes is gone. It is a small cut, barely visible to the diner, but it is one of dozens now being made across the industry. And it captures something larger about how India’s restaurants are responding to the Rs 993-per-cylinder hike: not with drama, but with a series of careful, near-invisible adjustments meant to keep the lights on without startling the customer.

Gas was cheap enough for long enough that many restaurants never had to look too hard at how they used it. Menus were wide, and waste was treated as a cost of doing business. The hike has put an end to that. Restaurants are now hunting for waste with a focus that, by most accounts, should have been there all along. The crisis may yet leave many of them leaner and sharper than they were before it began.