By our food reporter, Ahmedabad: City based Crown Plaza hotel has organized a 10-day vegetarian only food festival ‘Swad E Hindustan’ at its anchor food hall ‘Essence’ (located on the ground floor, the other restaurant ‘Rang’ is on the first floor and serves Gujarati menu). In-total about 500 vegetarian food varieties from all over India are being catered during ‘Swad E Hindustan’ festival.

The hotel has stayed away from catering non-veg food during this period with focus on local Gujarati food-lovers who largely prefer vegetarian-only menu, said Aman Tandon, a chief who has 21-year domestic and global experience.

‘Daly more than 100 varieties are catered to guests which include 28 deserts and 20 salads. During entire 10-day long festival period we are going to cater as many as 500 different varieties – all vegetarian and from different states of India in attempt to celebrate the diversity just ahead of country’s Independence day,’ Tandon said adding that a diverse team of 55 cooks from various Indian states makes this possible.

‘It took almost a month to conceptualized this festival. In all, 15-16 states are covered. We have North East’s Momo, Kashmir’s veg Kabab, Paniyaram, Kuttu Paratha, Apam, Malbari Korma, Idiappam from South, Sambhar varieties from four states …. people must know that South offers varieties other than Idli and Dosa,’ he said.

Preparations for so many Indian dishes had own requirements. A special utensil is required to make Paniyaram, a white colored soft food item. Or special ingredients to make Avdhi food varieties such as Itra, Kevda etc that are ordered from Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

Tandon is specially excited about desert section. He says, ‘you choose any desert item and it will be sweet in taste, yet how differently you can feel that sweetness. Sweetness of Rasagulla, sweetness of Sandesh, or sweetness of Jilani halwa which has lot of Khas Khas.’

While having food in the festival, we came across Mr. Ajay Tyagi from Delhi. He said he choose to start with desert and not end with. He said he first tasted Jilani Halwa and was surprised with its smoothness and taste.

Another guest said, she liked Kuttu Paratha, the variety in which Paratha is served in pieces with Onion mixed in it.

A Bohra Muslim gentleman who otherwise prefer non-veg food was very happy with the experience of pan Indian food items served on his table. He along with his family members said, though all food items were vegetarian, they had nothing to complain because of lot of unheard tasty varieties being offered from various parts of the country.

Essence food hall in Crown Plaza serves dinner during 7 to 11 pm. Buffet price for one person is Rs. 1299 plus tax which comes to Rs. 1425 around. Swad E Hindustan vegetarian festival will continue till 4th August.

DeshGujarat