Kashmir's Centuries-Old Wazwan Feast Adapts as Younger Chefs Trade Wedding Kitchens for Restaurants

In the courtyards and narrow lanes of Srinagar, the arrival of autumn brings with it a sound that has signalled celebration in Kashmir for generations: the rhythmic thud of wooden mallets striking lamb. The percussion is the opening act of Wazwan, a lavish multicourse mutton feast that has remained at the heart of traditional Kashmiri weddings for some 600 years.

Wazwan is far more than a meal. It is a statement of identity, a display of hospitality and, in many cases, a measure of a family's standing in the community. The tradition traces its origins to Central Asia, arriving in the Kashmir Valley in the 14th century when rulers brought skilled cooks with them, alongside the carpet and shawl weavers whose crafts would go on to define the region's cultural heritage.

Among those who guard the tradition today is Ghulam Nabi Baba, a 74-year-old veteran chef who can trace his lineage directly to those early migrants. His forefathers settled in Srinagar's old city as part of a community of cooks known as Wazpora, a name that has become synonymous with the craft.

Baba has watched the feast evolve across his lifetime. What began as a modest spread of seven mutton preparations has grown considerably, he explained, with roughly 20 dishes now featuring in a typical Wazwan. The expansion reflects centuries of refinement rather than a single moment of change, as successive generations of cooks added their own signatures to the menu.

The scale of the feast has always carried social meaning. Baba recalled preparing 4,500 kilograms of meat roughly four decades ago for a wedding in Delina, a village in northern Kashmir, describing it as an exceptionally large celebration. By contrast, an average marriage typically requires around 200 kilograms of meat, he said. Both the number of dishes and the quantity of meat served often signal a family's wealth, making Wazwan a public marker of status as well as a gesture of generosity.

Yet for all the expansion of the menu, the fundamental techniques have proved remarkably resistant to change. Lightly spiced meat is still pounded by hand and then simmered slowly over wood fires, a labour-intensive process that gives Wazwan its distinctive texture and smoky character. Baba has followed that method since he was 15 years old, when he joined his father in the kitchen.

The classic repertoire includes rista, meatballs served in a red gravy; gushtaba, a yoghurt-based meat dish; rogan josh; tabak maaz, or fried ribs; and kabab. Many of these preparations are cooked in degchis, heavy-bottomed copper pots that sit over open flames during wedding preparations.

Serving is as ritualised as the cooking. Dishes are presented on a trami, a traditional copper platter, and guests typically share from the same vessel. Gushtaba occupies a special place in the sequence: it is the final dish of a Wazwan and its arrival signals that the meal is drawing to a close.

The pressures of contemporary life, however, are quietly reshaping how the tradition is practised. Baba's son has chosen a different path from his father, opening a restaurant instead of continuing the family's wedding catering business. His reasoning was straightforward: the round-the-clock demands of cooking for weddings are too exhausting to sustain.

That decision might look like a break with tradition, but Baba's son sees it differently. He believes he is still carrying forward his family's centuries-old culinary legacy, simply in a different setting, as Wazwan adapts to contemporary tastes and lifestyles. In recent years, other younger chefs have made similar moves, shifting from wedding catering into restaurant work while seeking to preserve the feast's culinary heritage.

The shift speaks to a broader tension facing many traditional crafts in Kashmir and beyond: how to keep inherited practices alive when the working conditions that sustained them no longer fit modern expectations. Wedding catering is seasonal, physically punishing and dependent on large teams working through the night, while restaurant work offers steadier hours and a wider customer base.

For diners in Srinagar, the change has made Wazwan more accessible than ever. Restaurants serving the feast allow customers to sample its signature dishes without waiting for a wedding invitation, introducing the cuisine to new audiences and enabling chefs to work year-round rather than in bursts tied to the marriage season.

Purists may worry that something is lost when the feast leaves the wedding courtyard. The communal trami, the ceremonial order of dishes and the sense of occasion attached to a marriage all contribute to the experience of Wazwan in ways a restaurant table cannot fully replicate. Yet the essential skills, from hand-pounding meat to slow-cooking over wood, remain central to the restaurant versions as well.

For Baba, the tradition's endurance rests on more than technique. It is bound up with Kashmiri identity itself, a cuisine that has survived centuries of political and social change in the valley. The fact that it continues to draw on the same methods and ingredients that arrived with Central Asian cooks in the 14th century is, in his view, a testament to its durability.

As autumn settles over Kashmir and wedding season approaches, the mallets will keep sounding in courtyards across Srinagar. Some of the cooks wielding them will be preparing for a marriage feast in the traditional manner. Others will be doing so in restaurant kitchens their fathers might never have imagined. Either way, the dishes that reach the trami will carry the same lineage, adapted to the rhythms of a changing region while holding on to a culinary inheritance that has already outlasted six centuries.