The gastronomification of urban India: Emergence of food hubs across cities

UNtil near half a dozen years agone, Noida’s sphere 104 was a restrained residential neighbourhood of independent houses and tree-lined streets. Today, its ground floors are lined with a wide variety of cafés, bakeries and restaurants, turning it into one of the city’s busiest dining destinations.The transformation is familiar in other cities. Parts of Bengaluru’s Indiranagar, Hyderabad’s Jubilee Hills and Pune’s Koregaon Park have, all over the years, evolved from residential enclaves into food hubs that draw visitors from across their cities. Even established commercial districts such as Kolkata’s Park Street, Delhi’s Khan Market and Connaught Place are increasingly defined by restaurants and cafés.Architect Manit Rastogi, founding partner of Morphogenesis, an architectural firm, calls it the “gastronomification of our urban fabric.”While cities across the world have witnessed similar “restaurantification” — from Brooklyn in New York to Seoul’s Hongdae, urbanists say the Indian story is different in both speed and scale. The worrying shift, they say, is that in Indian cities, food is not one element among many but a dominant commercial force reshaping high-streets, neighbourhoods and public spaces.Also Read: 9 restaurants in India that are 'older than your grandparents': From Darjeeling and Kolkata to Delhi, Mumbai, BengaluruWhen the market reshapes the cityConnaught Place illustrates how market forces reshape urban spaces.The restaurant boom began after the colonial arcade’s renovation in 2014. By 2017, dozens of restaurants, bars and cafés had opened, many occupying first- and second-floor spaces that had long been vacant.“Until about 20 years ago, there were barely ten major restaurants and bars in Connaught Place. Today there are well over a hundred, and new ones keep opening every year,” says Atul Bhargava, president of the New Delhi Traders Association (NDTA).But the transformation came at the cost of a far more eclectic commercial mix. Once home to piano shops, curio stores, bookshops, grocery shops and independent retailers, Connaught Place, developed by the British as a Georgian-style high street to serve as the premier cultural, high-end retail, and culinary destination for the elite, today is largely a food-and-beverage destination.“Restaurants simply paid higher rents,” says Bhargava. “You can’t blame landlords for choosing tenants who offered better returns. Ultimately, it is demand and supply,” he says.Aditya Jain, who opened QBA in Connaught Place in 2004, says the economics strongly favoured restaurants. Rising incomes fuelled eating out, while eateries could operate profitably from upper floors where rents were much lower than on the ground level.“Over time this reduced the diversity of businesses. Bookshops and music stores struggled with rising rents, while online shopping made it even harder for them to survive,” he says. “There is also a certain glamour attached to owning a restaurant or café, which keeps attracting new entrants.”For architect Manit Rastogi, the trend exposes a deeper gap in how Indian cities think about cultural infrastructure. Urban planning frameworks in India, he points out, largely regulate land use but rarely address what might be called life use: the diversity of cultural and intellectual activity that sustains urban life.Also Read: Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Get off the waitlist“As a result, spaces that once hosted bookstores, galleries, craft shops or independent cultural enterprises are gradually giving way to high-yield cafés and restaurants. This creates what might be described as an urban monoculture,” he says. “When neighbourhood economies become overwhelmingly oriented toward food and lifestyle consumption, cities risk losing quieter forms of engagement that nurture thought, creativity and cultural exchange,” adds Rastogi.Dikshu Kukreja, managing principal at CP Kukreja Architects, says: “Many global cities consciously protect bookstores, galleries, performance venues and independent retail. But Indian planning frameworks rarely prioritise such cultural ecosystems,” he says.Historian Aloka Parasher-Sen notes that India’s historic markets were never organised around food alone. “Walled cities combined craft, trade and commerce with cultural activities such as qawwalis and mushairas. “Food was part of a much richer ecosystem,” she says. “Markets were mixed spaces where economic, cultural and social life coexisted.”Real estate and the footfall imperativeReal estate experts say powerful economic incentives have made restaurants among the most sought-after tenants in commercial property.“Food is what brings footfall in Indian cities, not museums or galleries,” says Vibhor Jain, founder and CEO of Carbon Guardians and formerly with Cushman & Wakefield. He points to the closure of Madame Tussauds in Connaught Place as evidence that restaurants generate the sustained visitor traffic commercial districts depend on. As a result, he says, food outlets are increasingly used as anchor tenants in new developments.That success reshapes neighbourhood economics. “Once an area becomes known for restaurants and nightlife, rents begin to reflect the economics of evening business,” says Anuj Kejriwal, CEO, Retail Leasing, ANAROCK. “Businesses with lower margins or daytime-only activity are gradually priced out, transforming mixed neighbourhood centres into leisure districts.”Restaurants also appeal to landlords because they generate repeat footfall, longer customer dwell times and are largely insulated from e-commerce, he adds. “Their expensive fit-outs encourage long leases, while established brands are often willing to pay premium rents for signage and frontage. Successful restaurant clusters then reinforce themselves as more operators move in to tap an established customer base.”The numbers reflect that shift. According to ANAROCK, food and beverage’s share of leasing in malls and high streets has risen from about 8% in FY19 to around 12% in FY25 and is projected to reach 16% by FY30. “F&B has consistently remained among the top three leasing categories,” says Kejriwal.The shrinking of public spacePost-Independence, Indian cities built relatively few major public squares, promenades or plazas compared with their European or Latin American counterparts, resulting in a shortage of civic spaces, say urban scholars. “In many ways, the rise of restaurant districts reflects this vacuum,” says Rastogi. “Indian cities built housing, roads and commercial infrastructure, but they created relatively few civic spaces or informal gathering places where people could simply spend time together.”In the absence of such spaces, cafés and restaurants often function as substitutes.“They become what urban theorists call “third places” — informal environments where people meet outside home and work,” Rastogi says. But, he adds, these spaces remain transactional and participation is tied to consumption.Kukreja agrees that commercial spaces cannot replace civic ones. “Cities need a wider range of civic spaces — parks, pedestrian streets, libraries and cultural venues — where people can gather without commercial strings attached.”“When neighbourhood economies become dominated only by food and lifestyle consumption, cities risk losing some of their diversity and depth,” he says.A healthy urban culture, he adds, depends on a mix of experiences--places where people can read, create, debate, perform and encounter new ideas. “Planning policies must ensure that cultural institutions and small creative enterprises continue to coexist alongside restaurants and cafés in city centres,” he says.However, professor Sydney Rebeiro, former dean of culture at the University of Delhi, offers a note of caution against viewing the shift as absolute. Art galleries, bookshops and other cultural institutions have not disappeared entirely, he says. “In Delhi, for example, many have simply relocated to smaller cultural clusters away from expensive high streets”.The rise of food-centric urbanism in India also reflects a broader shift in how cities are organised, experienced and imagined. Restaurants, cafés and food districts are increasingly influencing where people spend time — and even how neighbourhoods develop.“Most residential districts of our cities were never designed to absorb the logistical pressures created by restaurant clusters. A concentration of dining establishments fundamentally changes the spatial logic of a neighbourhood,” says Rastogi.The street itself begins to change.“Sidewalks become extensions of dining areas, delivery traffic intensifies and valet parking operations occupy public roads. Streets that once supported neighbourhood movement increasingly function as service corridors for hospitality activity,” he says.Finding a balanceIronically, many neighbourhoods that market themselves as culinary destinations are beginning to resemble one another. Whether in Bengaluru, Delhi or Pune, the mix is often strikingly familiar — microbreweries, sushi bars, artisanal bakeries, craft coffee cafés and fusion restaurants.“Yes, food districts across cities are strangely uniform,” says Rajiv Goyal, founder of India Food Tour.Urbanists argue that the challenge is not the rise of restaurants but their dominance. “Food districts should be part of a broader urban vision,” says Dikshu Kukreja. “Cities need mixed-use neighbourhoods where restaurants coexist with bookstores, galleries, independent retail and public spaces.”Rastogi believes planning can help restore that balance by requiring developers to provide publicly accessible seating and gathering spaces as part of new commercial developments.Retail patterns, however, are rarely permanent, says Kejriwal. “The current dominance of food and beverage reflects changing lifestyles and a younger generation that socialises outside the home,” he says. “But change in regulation, resident pushback and new retail formats could force some districts towards a more balanced mix of businesses.”