ITB Berlin: How Indian cuisine will represent flavours of Make in India

When the world’s largest industrial fair opens in Hannover on Monday, April 13, India will not be in full force as the partner country, but for the first time since 2007, when Incredible India was given a renewed push at the world’s largest travel and tourism show, Internationale Tourismus-Börse (ITB) Berlin, our cuisines will be showcased to drive home the country’s soft power.

We have been shying away from culinary diplomacy, but food was always integral to diplomacy. Indira Gandhi was famous for micro-managing state banquets and she even took steps like ask ITDC to open a Cypriot restaurant at The Ashok when India and Cyprus warmed up to each other after Archbishop Makarios was elected the island-state’s first president. It’s another matter that a Cypriot restaurant was a terrible business decision.

At Hannover, 28 chefs from six hotels are coming as Team India to serve 2,500 people each at dinners on April 12 and 13. They have been drawn from the Taj, which will be led by its recently retired corporate chef, Hemant Oberoi; ITC Maurya, under the leadership of Manjit Gill; The Oberoi, with Ravitej Nath at the helm; and the JW Marriott, its flag bearer being the quietly efficient Foodistan finalist Girish Krishnan. They will be assisted by the service teams of The Leela Palace New Delhi and the Hyatt Regency, also in the capital.

In what may be the first such hospitality industry initiative, they will not represent their individual hotel chains. This was the understanding the participating hotels had with the secretary, department of industrial policy and promotion, Amitabh Kanth, who’s orchestrating India’s Hannover push. Each chef will wear a uniform that will identify them only as members of the Experience India Society, a public-private partnership formed in 2011 to manage the image of the country. Their uniforms will also carry the words Prithvi Rasa, or the essence of the earth’s natural flavours. It was Gill who came up with the theme and all the hotels went along with it. It’s very hard to find two chefs agreeing on anything, but here you have 28 of them working together towards a common objective. Kant was also the man behind the memorable success of the ITB Berlin campaign. The German capital was then converted into a living gallery for images of Incredible India. That grand touch is evident yet again. Every public space and public vehicle in Hannover has been emblazoned with the Make in India lion.

There can be no better expression of Make in India than Indian cuisine. We have adopted the best of the world – from chillies, potatoes and tomatoes of the new world to dishes from as far as Ethiopia (samosa-sambusa?) and Persia (biryani-birinj?) to the Malayan Peninsula (the Malay curry that Bengalis can get enough of!); produced a smorgasbord of cuisines that now collectively rank among the top five in the world; and made imports sweat to gain any form of acceptance – from Vancouver to Atlanta, Wimbledon to Sydney, we have ensured a following for Indian-Chinese cuisine. Isn’t that what Make in India is in essence?

By showcasing our cuisines at Hannover – “nothing progressive, just honest Indian” – the government has made a start. It must now make it a habit to let our food talk in a language that the world understands.