There is a single sheet of paper, laminated now and kept in the Embassy archive, that lists the complete menu offered at our first catering engagement in 1948. It is a modest document by today's standards — twelve items in neat Devanagari script, a handful of dishes that reflected both the culinary traditions of Delhi and the particular constraints of the time.
Reading it now is a quietly moving experience. Some of those twelve dishes still appear on our menus today, essentially unchanged. Others have been retired, overtaken by shifting tastes or the unavailability of ingredients that once grew abundantly in the region. A few have been transformed beyond recognition — the same name, but a completely different expression of it, refined across decades of repetition and refinement.
The story of the Embassy menu is, in microcosm, the story of Delhi's culinary evolution.
1948: The Founding Menu
Delhi in 1948 was a city in the midst of profound transformation. Partition had reshaped its population and, with it, its food culture. Families from Lahore and Rawalpindi had brought their culinary traditions with them — the Punjabi robustness that would come to define the city's dominant food identity. But older Delhi flavours persisted: the Mughal-influenced preparations of the walled city, the subtle Persian notes that characterised the cuisine of established Muslim households, the vegetarian traditions of Jain and Bania communities.
Our first menu reflected this complexity. There were slow-cooked meats in the Mughal tradition — a nihari, a korma made with poppy seed paste and whole spices. There were Punjabi preparations that were already becoming the language of celebration in the city — a robust dal, a simple paneer dish. And there were sweets: gulab jamun made with khoya reduced on site, phirni set in earthen bowls.
The quantities were small. The ambitions were modest. But even in that first engagement, the commitment to quality that would define Embassy across the decades was already present.
The 1960s and 70s: The Continental Encounter
As India's diplomatic and business communities grew through the 1960s, Embassy began catering for an increasingly international clientele. The embassies of foreign nations in Delhi — which gave us, in part, our name and identity — required menus that could accommodate Western palates alongside Indian ones.
This was our first great culinary expansion. Our chefs learned to prepare continental dishes — roasts, soufflés, cream-based sauces — alongside the Indian preparations they had always known. But the Embassy approach, even then, was not simply to replicate. It was to understand the underlying logic of a cuisine and express it through the lens of our own culinary intelligence.
The result was a generation of dishes that we still think of as distinctively Embassy: a lamb preparation that used French braising technique but Indian spicing. A dessert that applied the logic of a crème brûlée to the flavours of rabdi. These were not fusion dishes in the contemporary sense — they were something more organic, born of genuine curiosity and daily practice.
The 1980s and 90s: The Wedding Decade
As Delhi's economy grew and its middle class expanded, the wedding became the primary arena for social expression. Families invested more. Guest lists grew. The expectations placed on the caterer shifted from mere adequacy to genuine distinction.
This was the period during which Embassy established the culinary signatures that would define us for the following generation. The dum biryani programme — where every biryani was sealed and cooked in the traditional manner, not assembled from pre-cooked components — became our most requested item and remains so today. The live chaat counter, which we introduced in this period, was considered innovative at the time and is now an industry standard.
We also built, during these years, the supplier relationships that continue to underpin our quality. The families who grow our basmati rice in the Dehradun valley. The dairy collective whose buffalo milk produces the khoya and paneer we use. The spice merchants in Old Delhi's Khari Baoli market who blend our masalas to specifications that have not changed in forty years.
The 2000s to Today: Global Fluency, Local Roots
The last two decades have brought the most rapid expansion in our menu's history. Delhi's exposure to global cuisine — through travel, through restaurants, through the internet — created a clientele that arrived at events with sophisticated expectations and specific requests.
We responded by investing in culinary education. Our chefs have trained in Italy, Japan, France, and Mexico. We have hosted visiting chefs from around the world. We have built a research kitchen where new preparations are tested, refined, and only adopted into our menu when they meet the standard we have maintained since 1948.
But the most important evolution of the last decade has been a deepening, rather than a broadening. As global influences have become available to everyone, what distinguishes Embassy is increasingly what has always distinguished us: the depth of our knowledge of Indian cuisine's most complex traditions, our access to the best regional ingredients, and our willingness to invest the time that great cooking requires.
The nihari on our current menu is made from a recipe that is, in its essentials, the same one that appeared on that laminated sheet from 1948. The technique is unchanged. The spice blend is unchanged. What has changed is the precision with which we execute it, the consistency we achieve across every event, the knowledge we bring to every bowl.
Seventy-eight years is a long time to cook. It is long enough to learn what matters and what doesn't. And what has always mattered, at Embassy, is the same thing it was in 1948: that the food on the plate is worth remembering.