planning 23 other events this year including one popup around august by an international chef even though the promoters believe that they should curate events with emerging talent they are candid enough to add that the young indian audience currently gets drawn to marquee names people are willing to pay for big names or diverse cuisines but not yet to give young talent a chance adds shetye the challenges in finding ingredients for the international chefs themselves both ingredients and equipment available in india present big challenges international chefs are used to stellar ingredients and equipment which are very difficult to source in our country points out shetye for the organisers despite the relative high price of tickets to these luxury meals there are still other expenses to take care of the cost of bringing the chef down is just one of them sponsors or tieups are thus invariably required and very few organisers as yet are investing huge sums themselves to cover these expenses most hotels for instance which bring in these star chefs do it through tieups with embassies airlines or run exchange programmes with other international hotel chains others seek sponsors nevertheless the meals are what you would call pricey but the 600010000 per person or more tickets for many of these may well be par for the course increasingly welltravelled and aspirational the metropolitan indian diner not just wants a chance to sample some international gastronomy at home but wants to be clearly seen to be doing so as well hence also the preference for marquee names on the other hand even a casual study of the socalled luxury diningscape in india shows us another side to this trend clearly top rated chefs cooking expensive and more importantly unfamiliar and exotic meals is only an occasional dalliance for most diners even in the highest income bracket most of the luxury international restaurants that had made a foray into the country seem to be languishing though there are few statistics available and no onrecord admissions the qsr segment is however dominated by foreign brands equally the whole idea of having expat chefs at restaurants which had been a barometer of trendiness some years ago has now given way to inventive indian chefs helming establishments if you think for a minute about the countrys top chefs the names that come to the mind are invariably indian chefs who are handson pushing the envelope with their creativity in mumbai names such as the tables alex sanchez who made india his home a few years ago may be the exception but fact is that indian chefs are taking centrestage like never before this is both because of a change in perception of the diningout populace that would earlier want to authenticate every cuisine by means of an expatlooking chef and a result also of newer opportunities available to younger chefs in the country who want to break out of hierarchies and traditional ways of doing business when