Cuisine Egalite

It’s a fact driven into us, day after dispiriting day, that we live in an age of confinement—locked up within four walls as an unseen, deadly occupier declares curfew. For the elderly and the infirm who need daily care, the second wave of the pandemic, like last year’s lockdown months, has left them destitute of all care: geriatric help and household chore, as well as that daily necessity—the preparation of nourishing food. For others too, cooking is an interminable drag. For all of them, meal boxes prepared by ‘home chefs’ have appeared as pleasant, and predictable, agents of salvation. Indeed, isn’t this a step away from a DIY gourmet food kit, itself the saviour of many a fashionable eatery?

Aparajita Sen, an engineer based in Mumbai, was worried how her aged parents living in Delhi would manage without their cook. Then, through a friend, she got in touch with Sarthak Grover, the founder of Zingg—a community of home chefs and food lovers across Delhi NCR that serves as a marketplace enabling home chefs to increase their custom. Grover connected her to the home chefs who could cater to the needs of her ailing parents.

Talking about founding Zingg in 2019, Sarthak says, “My passion for food was the driving force for starting Zingg. Because of a multicultural family—on my dad’s side, we have relatives who are Bengali, Burmese, Goan Christian and Jewish—I have grown up eating a diverse range of cuisine. One can’t get authentic regional food in Delhi NCR easily, so when I saw home chefs bridging this gap, I strove to create a platform for them and to form a community around the love of food.”

Food cooked by home chefs, says Sarthak, differs from restaurant food in the single most important ingredient—eateries cook from a ready template, leaving a similar patina of taste on the palate for every preparation. On the other hand, home chefs of Zingg make special meals for even Covid pat­ients. “Home cooked food is a game changer,” says Sarthak with satisfaction.

Faced with a barrage of orders from Covid sufferers, home chefs are proving equal to the challenge.  Sarthak says, “We have encouraged home chefs to come up with affordable, nutritious tiffin-style daily meals for them. Chefs are working tirelessly towards lunch and dinner deliveries and have highly streamlined operations as frontline Covid food providers. They are providing hundreds of meals to Covid patients.” Then there are the humanitarians in the Zingg community who are even providing food for free.

Home chef Ashwini Shroff quit his restaurant business and started his home kitchen Spicy Triangle during the 2020 lockdown from his residence in Vasant Vihar, Delhi. “My home kitchen is famous for tandoori kebabs, mutton chops and almond halwa. On April 14, seeing the dire situation in Delhi, I started providing food free of cost,” says Ashwini. He sends breakfast to 20 homes with diabetic or sick patients and to the elderly who cannot cook. Lunch and dinner boxes are sent to 108 houses too.

Ashwini’s meal boxes consist of one dal and one vegetable curry with rice and roti. The punctual Ashwini delivers breakfast by 9 am, lunch at 1.30 pm and dinner by 8.30 pm.  Besides, he also sends medicines, adult diapers, toiletries and fruits to senor citizens. In the teeth of the pandemic’s sledgehammer blows, his is community service with the utm­ost dedication. “The home chefs and I get daily calls to identify people who can serve food to Covid-infected families, so we’re interacting with each other on how to best serve people,” says Sarthak.

Bhojan, another new-age food tech start-up, is dedicated to providing affordable meals. Bhojan founder Vaibbhav Arora says, “We are driven by the recognition of every human’s right to a clean, fulfilling meal. Bhojan helps create a platform for mass food distribution and nurtures micro-entrepreneurship.”

Opening up further on their credo, Vaibbhav adds, “With people helping each other in these chaotic times, we felt that we had to be part of the solution. Since our mission is to make quality food accessible through affordable pricing, we serve those stuck in containment zones and under home quarantine.” Bhojan offers seven-day, 14-day and monthly subscriptions in select locations in Gurugram. People can easily subscribe through WhatsApp for ‘Chhota Bhojan’ (breakfast opt­ions) and combo meals at Rs 49 each, Standard Meals at Rs 69 and thalis at Rs 89.

In Mumbai, chef Ananya Banerjee’s dream of a restaurant was nixed by the virus, ultimately leading her to cooking out of her kitchen. “Since a lot of thought and structuring of my menu was in place, the shift was not difficult,” says Ananya. Her forte is cuisines neglected by restaurants—Bengali food, Calcutta Anglo-Indian cuisine, Tangra (Calcutta’s China-town) Chinese, Zakharia Street Mughlai food and Odia food. Customers are also lapping up her Ethiopian, Peruvian, German and Turkish cuisine.

Other than hygiene and taste, the trying times we endure demands safe and reliable packing. “Each food is packed in individual boxes, then the boxes are wrapped in a paper bag and sealed. That goes into ano­ther bag, which the courier carries. So, the first two layers can be discarded, making the delivery contactless.”

Ananya, of course, has more niche customers than do Sarthak and Vaibbhav. “I have chosen a bespoke, gourmet meals model. I have created dishes like ‘Lobster Thermidor’ and ‘Wellington’ in my French meals, ‘Saurbraten’ for my German meals and ‘Tres Letches’ for my Peruvian meals,” she says.

Noida-based Ayandrali Dutta is known for her thematic food pop-ups—with a specialisation in Bengali and Odia cuisine—at her home. The pandemic put an end to all that. “I got a lot of query regarding delivery during that time and that’s when I thought it wouldn’t be a bad option to explore,” says Ayandrali. Going by the current costs of ordering in, the price range of Ayandrali’s meals is reasonable. “I do bulk orders of one or two dishes, like mutton kosha (dry mutton curry) or fish kalia (fish in thick onion and tomato gravy) for 10 people…the cost depends on that and on the distance the food travels,” she adds.

Nutan Dayal, a home chef from Gurgaon who specialises in Thai cuisine says, “We lived in Thailand for 14 years and made Thai food at home. Back in India, we saw only limited Thai options—mostly red and green curry and stir fry. That’s when I started cooking home-style Thai food. The realities of the pandemic also spurred her on. “During the lockdown there was a demand for home chefs in my apartment complex and I started taking orders and refined my dishes.”

Nutan’s signature dishes include turmeric chicken (from southern Thailand), yellow curry crab and fried morning glory salad. Most of her curry pastes are authentic and made at home.

Catering to the demotic and the pandemic-hit as well as those with refined palates and bigger purses, home chefs have turned the death knell of restaurants into that sweetest of chimes—a call to sample culinary excellence on tables laden with flavorous forgetfulness.