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The festival chefs!
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Hotels are increasingly bringing in chefs who specialise in different Indian cuisines to churn out delicacies, notes MANGALA RAMAMOORTHY
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From the street to chic A cook from Old Delhi’s Paranthewali Gali (right) whips up delicacies at Baluchi, InterContinental The Grand, during its street food festival
Indian cuisine is known for the variety it offers. And the variety is such that if you travel from any part of the country, you can notice the difference in the taste of food every few hundred kilometres. The hoteliers too like to bring this diversit
y to the table for the customers, mostly done in the form of food festivals. However, the ones bringing in the right flavours and aromas to the special menu cards are not the regular hotel chefs but specialised chefs flown in for the occasion from that region itself. Ramit Wason, Executive Chef, The Metropolitan Nikko, gives an insight, “There are so many cuisines that comprise Indian cuisine, which possibly a single chef cannot master. Just imagine, down South there are specialities like Malabari and Chettinad, which people in North will not know.” He flew in a chef from Hyderabad for the hotel’s Hyderabadi food festival recently.
When ITC Maurya hosted the Parsi food festival some weeks ago, it got in Pervez Patel, who runs a Parsi restaurant in Mumbai, to be a part of the culinary team. Pratima Vasan, spokesperson, ITC Maurya, reasons, “When a specialised chef prepares food, it is bound to encase the flavours and aromas of the place or the genre he represents. This provides for an authentic, value for money experience. We have done similar thing with our Kolhapuri, Rajasthan and Kashmiri food festivals.”
Knowledge matters
The chef concerned could well be working with the same group of hotels in another city, run a corner food shop or own a plush restaurant. The only thing that matters is the knowledge about the cuisine. “The dishes that we serve during special promotional weeks are not commonly served in hotels. The usage of spices and the way of preparation is different. When we had our Amritsari food festival, the chef from Amritsar even got various ingredients with him. Also, such festivals are often a one-time affair, so it is important to get it right,” explains Nita Nagraj, Executive Chef, Jaypee Vasant Continental. For their Dilli Ka Khana festival, the hotel had invited Gunjan Goela who specialises in the same cuisine, and another chef from the famous Paranthewali Gali from the Walled City to conjure up delicacies.
Baluchi at InterContinental The Grand did something similar for its street food festival and roped in cooks from Paranthewali Gali as well as others who make popular street food in Old Delhi. “The response was so good, as they got to eat something very authentic but under hygienic conditions. I think it was a good match of their expertise and our facilities,” explains Ravindra Kumar, the hotel’s Food and Beverage Manager.
At a time when people are ready to experiment with different international cuisines, foodies also have realised that Indian cuisine itself is so underexposed. Also with globalisation, people are now moving out of their regions to other places and are always on the look out for food from their state. This has given a major push to specialised chefs. Agrees Devraj Halder, Executive Chef, Uppal’s Orchid, which got a chef from Mumbai for Maharashtrian food festival, “Someone who’s born, brought up and belongs to a region, will definitely know everything right from how to prepare, how to serve and eat a particular cuisine. Also, when you get a specialised chef, it increases the curiosity factor in a diner. The customer feels confident that he is indeed eating the authentic food. It is also done to break the monotony of serving the same food.”
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