Golden Makeover. A status lift for the humble paan leaf

Move over mint, basil and curry leaf, it’s the desi betel leaf that is hogging the attention of many a five-star hotel chef and entrepreneur. At the Leela Palace in Udaipur, in a special experiential pop-up by celebrity masterchef contestant, Chef Sarah Todd, the star of the six-course meal was a betel leaf-charged lamb skewer dish with pineapple gel. Todd said she was fascinated by the properties of the leaf and its flavour.

At an event at the Taj Mahal hotel in Delhi, when diplomat writer Pavan Varma was asked to rustle up a dish, he made a dahi kebab in which betel leaves were finely chopped and mixed with hung curd to add an intriguing flavour.

If you follow food bloggers on Instagram, betel leaf rasam is trending heavily, as are betel leaf fritters.

Status Lift

Varieties of paan from The Betel Leaf Co.

The humble, post-meal, digestive paan leaf is now getting into the main course and is getting re-invented and repositioned in many avatars. The status lift is not surprising as Chef Simran Singh Thapar, Culinary Director at the Leela Palace, Udaipur points out that paan leaves are rich in Vitamin C and is known to aid in good oral health and digestion. “Betel leaves are very attractive to look at and this becomes the reason why chefs love to use whole betel leaves to add presentation value to the dish,” he says. Betel leaves are used in kebabs, chaats and desserts, he says, but his favourite preparation is his own version of Paan Patte ki chaat, where he uses the elements of meetha paan in the form of a chaat and the betel leaf as a fritter to add a wonderful crispy texture.

Nutritionist Kavita Devgan endorses the health value of the betel leaf, which she says have medicinal properties, “They are loaded with nutrients like vitamin C, thiamine (B1), riboflavin (B2), niacin (B3) and carotene (vitamin A). The leaves also contain a significant amount of all essential amino acids except lysine, histidine and arginine which occur in traces,” she says.

Paan at your doorstep

Prem Raheja, Founder and CEO, The Betel Leaf Co.

If chefs and nutritionists are singing paeans to the paan leaf, then entrepreneur Prem Raheja is elevating the leaf to exalted levels through his start up, The Betel Leaf Co. It was actually his own frustrations in finding a good paan that led him to found the D2C start-up that offers 45 flavours of paan and delivers it at your doorsteps in 11 cities.

Customers can order over Swiggy or Dunzo, through their website or over WhatsApp. “As a regular consumer, I noticed a lot of shortcomings in the paan experience,” he says. For one, the ingredients were often substandard and the paan was often packed in a newspaper by roadside vendors – the packaging was just not hygienic.

After intense research, the former director of capital markets at JLL took the plunge in 2019 and went the whole hog “paan-dering” to all tastes – from the regular saada and meetha to chocolate, blueberry, cherry, coffee and even cognac flavours, among others. The recipes have been lovingly created by him and the paans are prepared in dark kitchens and delivered neatly in triple-layered foiling in lovely green boxes to avoid contamination. It’s the high quality magai leaf, he says, that makes the difference.

Paan Flavoured Chocolates

But Raheja has not stopped at offering paans. Other offerings are chocolate bars in paan flavor, ice-creams and even a betel leaf tea, which he says, helps address gut inflammation and bloating.

If the product is innovative, the marketing is too – for those who want a post-meal paan daily, there is a monthly subscription plan. Not surprisingly, the entrepreneur who has closed two rounds of funding ($200k in the first round and $900k in the next) for his unconventional start-up calls the betel leaf “a gold leaf”!