18 May 2025
Chef Rahul Singh has always treated the kitchen as a canvas and his ingredients as brushstrokes—each meal an evolving masterpiece shaped by intuition, memory, and precision. His work isn’t confined to the plate; it’s a philosophy that elevates food into a deeply human experience. In 2012, when he was just 33, he launched Foraged Flame, a chef’s table experience tucked behind an unmarked door in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. With only eight seats and no fixed menu, guests were invited not just to dine, but to participate in the unfolding of a seasonal narrative. Rahul would often forage for wild herbs in the mornings and serve them by night, weaving stories of the land into each course. “The mountains speak,” he once said. “I only translate.” Dishes like smoked pear chutney with alpine pepper or hand-rolled buckwheat pasta in a fenugreek cream were more than culinary innovations—they were love letters to the landscape. Even the crockery was made by a local ceramicist, fired with glazes derived from forest ash, connecting each bite to the region's natural rhythms. In 2021, Foraged Flame quietly closed its doors during a year-long sabbatical Rahul took to study ancestral fermentation methods in Northeast India. But its legacy lives on in an upcoming book and documentary, both titled Edible Silence, which explore the quiet wisdom behind his most iconic creations.
