India, April 1 -- justify;">Some food movements arrive not as trends, but as homecomings. Across India, chefs are digging back into the soil and pulling out stories. At Masque in Mumbai, Head Chef Varun Totlani treats forgotten ingredients like VIP guests.

Prickly pear, usually a spiky afterthought on a cactus, becomes a sharp pink sorbet, chilled with tender tadgola, tangled with chhunda, slicked with gondhoraj lime leaf oil and finished with chilli and chaat masala salt. It tastes like a Bombay summer reimagined by a very precise dreamer.

"We tap global techniques to deepen flavour, because there's no single way to honour indigenous ingredients", says Totlani. In Delhi, The Agave Room leans into local jewels, millets, wild olives, sha...