SWĀD

65-plus dishes to collect and curate from across India

An entire University’s worth of audience to reach

6-member organizing committee

1 week to plan and execute

SWĀD was quite an experience!

 …But this was just the beginning.

How did it start?

As students of hotel management, food and culinary arts mean a lot everyone in my department. We learn a lot about benchmark cuisines like French, Italian, Continental and more recently, South-East Asian. And many of us aspire to be chefs or restaurateurs and work closely with food. But I wonder, somewhere along the way, have we become so enamoured by these exotic, foreign cuisines that we lose a sense of our own food?

This concern has been expressed a lot in the recent years, especially organizations like Slow Food and NESFAS.

With this concern in mind, I had been toying with the idea of starting a sort of student-run food club in college that celebrated local, traditional food in a sustainably way.

And so, SWĀD was born.

It finally began, a week before the 12^th December 2014, when we decided to launch SWĀD by holding its first event. Yes, we were a core team of just 6 people. And yes, we had just a week to plan it, execute it, and make it a hit. It was one of the busiest weeks of my life yet. But we did it!

The entrence to the SWĀD exhibit
Photo: Ashweeja Gowda

On that day, along the main avenue of Christ University, the 1^st year students of BHM (my class) showcased 68 dishes from across India. And unlike any BHM event before it, we were not selling food.

Instead, all dressed up in our respective traditional attire, we invited the entire University to view the exhibit and taste the food free of charge! The aim was to revive appreciation for foods that have been in our kitchens for generations, but are losing popularity in the face of the new, the exotic and the foreign.

Presenting our traditional dishes to visitors
Photo: Ashweeja Gowda

The response was overwhelming. We must have had at least a few thousand visitors in the few short hours that we were open – easily more than four times what we had expected!

Apart from this, some very special guests, including celebrity Chef Abhijit Saha and Mr. Jayaram H.R. of The Green Path Eco Hotel, graced this event. They eagerly listened, asked questions and tasted the dishes we presented. It was very encouraging.

Mr. Jayaram inaugurating the event
Photo: Sai Darshan

Chef Abhijit Saha walking through the exhibit and tasting the dishes
Photo: Sai Darshan

But of course, like I said, the first event was just the beginning. The aim is for SWĀD to grow into a movement towards celebrating our own food, sustainably!

And to kick off the next leg we have a few more events and one very exciting book project up our sleeves! I’ll keep you updated. I’m very excited about the journey to come!