What Happens When Telugu Food Meets a Chef’s Global Journey
He went abroad looking for new cuisines, only to return with a deeper appreciation of his own. At ROCH, Chef Rohit Chidurala brings together lessons from professional kitchens, childhood food memories and the less-explored flavours of Andhra and Telangana.
For Chef Rohit Chidurala, the road to Telugu cuisine was, unexpectedly, a long one.
It took him through professional kitchens, across countries and into cuisines very different from the food he grew up eating. But somewhere along that journey, the chef began to look back at his own culinary roots with fresh eyes. Today, that journey finds expression at ROCH Chef’s Table in Kondapur, an intimate 10-seater where Andhra and Telangana cuisine is being interpreted through an eight-course tasting menu.
“The tasting menu is basically a combination of all the experiences I had throughout my journey, from different kitchens, different countries, or inspiration from different chefs,” Rohit says.
His relationship with food, however, began much closer to home. As a child, Indian food seemed familiar to the point of predictability. He remembers watching his mother cook every day, with vegetables changing but the cooking itself appearing largely unchanged. Other cuisines, by comparison, seemed to offer constant discovery.
That curiosity eventually took him to Singapore, where he could explore a concentrated mix of Asian cuisines. “The more I tried to understand all the cuisines, I started getting closer to our cuisine,” he says.
It was a gradual realisation. What he had once considered ordinary began to reveal itself as far more complex. “What happens at home is just like a fraction of what the cuisine is about, especially our Telugu cuisine,” he says. “There’s much broader perspective or broader reach for Telugu food as well.”
That discovery now sits at the heart of ROCH Chef’s Table. Rather than reproducing familiar Telugu dishes in a conventional format, Rohit uses them as starting points, bringing together regional ingredients, memories and techniques gathered along the way.
The intention is also to keep evolving. Rohit says the menu changes every three months according to the season, with the team spending considerable time developing each menu. The current tasting menu moves through dishes that are recognisably rooted in the region but arrive in forms that can be surprising.
Gongura, for instance, is treated not simply as the familiar pachadi but developed into a gel. Other dishes play with ingredients and combinations that might not immediately suggest traditional Telugu cooking. A sarvapindi tartlet, yogurt gel, banana chilli and grilled dosakaya appear on the vegetarian menu, while a Kiwi Makka Vada takes the idea of the familiar corn vada in another direction, with corn custard, curry leaf podi and gongura gel.
There is a similar sense of play in the desserts. A payasam custard tart brings together bobbatlu and strawberry podi, while the petit fours include a rose toddy gummy and sunnundalu cake.
The meal is not designed simply to make regional food look contemporary. Rohit is more interested in exploring what else Telugu cuisine can be.
“I felt Telugu cuisine wasn’t being represented in a fine dining way possible,” he says. “It was either a fry or a rice variation. That has been going on for years whenever you see a Telugu restaurant.”
For him, the tasting menu offers a different possibility. “Why can’t we showcase our Telugu cuisine in a much contemporary way where it’s easier for especially the foreigners or people visiting Hyderabad?” he asks.
Chef Rohit Chidurala
That approach also explains why ROCH does not try to lock itself into one definition too early. Rohit says the restaurant is still in its early stages and expects its identity to evolve. One direction he is particularly interested in exploring is the region’s lesser-known ingredients and recipes.
“Maybe trying to get in more regional, tribal flavours, ingredients and maybe lost recipes. That could become our identity as we go down the line, where we are trying to document the old recipes in a modern format,” he adds.
Lamb Neck, Toddy Brioche & Kalinkaya Kosho Rice
There is also an interest in ingredients that are rarely given centre stage. Rohit speaks about using “unused ingredients or rare ingredients” to create a sense of exclusivity without compromising on the integrity of the food.
That same instinct can be seen in ROCH Ramen, the lunch concept that sits alongside the dinner tasting menu. Rohit’s affection for ramen goes back to his time in Singapore, where he ate it frequently and developed a particular fondness for it.
At ROCH, Japanese technique becomes a framework rather than a template. The menu brings Indian flavours into ramen and Japanese comfort food, while also offering dishes such as karaage, sandos and gyoza.
8 Course Chef's Table
The decision to introduce ramen was partly driven by what Rohit saw happening around him. Hyderabad’s dining landscape, he says, is changing rapidly, with diners becoming increasingly interested in different cuisines and experiences. The expansion of the city, particularly around the Financial District and Nanakramguda, has also created a growing audience for new dining formats.
ROCH itself has followed an equally organic path.
When Rohit started it in 2020, there was no grand culinary identity attached to the name. “ROCH started as a name with no specific identity,” he says. “Jo milega wo karenge, like catering, maybe kitty parties, small orders, cakes, anything.”
The willingness to do whatever came their way eventually led him towards custom cakes. At the time, he felt there was room for a stronger buttercream cake brand in the city and the Cake Studio became a major part of ROCH.
The brand has now moved into a very different space, but Rohit sees the evolution as part of the same process of understanding the market, experimenting and gradually finding its direction.
At the Chef’s Table, that direction is increasingly clear. The room is small, the menu is seasonal and the food is rooted in a cuisine Rohit once thought he knew simply because he had grown up eating it.
His journey through other cuisines did not take him away from home after all. It gave him the distance to see home differently.
And perhaps that is what ROCH is ultimately trying to do: not reinvent Telugu food for the sake of novelty, but ask what else it can become when memory, technique and curiosity meet on the same plate.