ARINDAM GANGULLY, OP
Sneha Senapati, hailing from Bhubaneswar and living in Mumbai is preparing Oriya cuisine for Oriyas living there
BHUBANESWAR: Love and affection for the native traditions remain deep-rooted even among those who transplant themselves to other regions. This is more so in the matter of native cuisine. The western metropolis of Mumbai has a sizeable number of Oriyas settled there for jobs and professional pursuits. For those who yearned for such native dishes, an Oriya girl, Sneha Senapati, has come up with a treat. She is hosting an ‘Odia bhoji’ at a popular restaurant there once in a while. Sneha is a banker by profession and lives in Mumbai for the last 11 years. She started the initiative after finding that it was not easy to find a place that serves good Odia food.
She had gone to Mumbai in 2006 for study. Later, she started working as a senior program manager in Ratnakar bank. She said, “As an Oriya, I love my native spread of dishes and cook them regularly”. Added she, “So I wanted to collaborate with a local restaurant that was organising lunch parties with specific menu linked to various state cuisines. I went to them and expressed an interest to serve Oriya cuisine.
Once I did it, the response was overwhelming. Besides Oriyas living in Mumbai who craved for authentic Odia cuisine, a lot of non-Odias too stepped in to enjoy the food that I prepared and served there twice.” Sneha said that she loved to cook and cooked a lot at her spare time. She prepared very many items for around 120 to 150 people a day with the help of the restaurant staff. “This much of food preparation took more than three hours,” she said. The lunch menu included dishes like Mudhi masala, chicken pakoda, mix bhaja, machha bhaja, alu chop and mutton keema baraa. The main course comprised ghee anna, dalma, badi churra, khasi mansa tarkari, bandha kobi matar, machha kalia, chuin alu besara, kukuda kassa, Cuttack dahi bara aludum, amba khatta, dahi baigana and luchi. Then, desserts had chaula khiri, iced tea and smoothie.
Many people loved the dishes she prepared. Many a time, people not familiar with Odiya food took it to be Bengali food. “About 90 per cent of the chefs working across different hotels in Mumbai are Oriyas. Still, most Indians aren’t aware of Odia dishes. “Through
this bhoji, I am endearing them to our native food varieties,” she said. Till now, she has organised two Oriya special lunch sessions at the restaurant. The first one was done in March and the second one on September 17. More such sessions will follow. Prashant Pallath, the owner of the restaurant with whom Sneha collaborated said We were organising lunch parties for various Indian cuisines with the aim to promote them among different categories of people and create awareness about that particular cuisine so that the authentic dishes of different cuisines do not die a natural death.
The first lunch event was based on Parsi cuisine and this was the second one in the series on Odia cusine. Sneha expressed her interest to host the lunch and so I thought it was a great idea and gave her the platform.” “The environment at the venue was made such that it would portray the essence of Odia culture and tradition. The motive was to make people feel and know unique things about our culture and cuisine, who came for the party. The dining hall decoration was organised with Oriya like Sambalpuri sarees, Pipili artifacts and chanduas. Also Sambalpuri music was also played
