Published On: 2018-09-13

Better Kitchen organized a novel two-days event, Everest Culinary Challenge 2018 with the
theme of “Flavours of India” on 7-8 September, 2018 at Sheila Raheja Institute of Hotel
Management. 18 teams from 15 hospitality colleges based in Mumbai and nearby areas
participated in the challenge. Each participating team was named after a spice. Thus the
Flavours of India were represented by 18 different spices.
The challenge was launched by celebrity Chef Gautam Mehrishi, Corporate Chef of Hotel Sun-N-
Sand. During his address Chef Gautam advised students of hospitality courses to be innovative
as well as creative. He told students to experiment and spend more time in the kitchen. He also
urged students to go for progressive cooking. He said a huge potential existed in Indian cooking
for innovation and creativity.
Day one was the elimination round wherein participants prepared three course meals. The jury
comprised Chef Jerson Fernandes - Executive Chef, Hotel Sea Princess, Chef Altamsh Patel - Sr.
Sous Chef, TajSATS, Chef Dev Kasalkar – Managing Director, Chef’s Kitchen and Linette Banerjee
– Director, Global Anchor Cruises. The jury shortlisted 12 teams for the Grand Finale on the
second day.
The second day’s challenge was to prepare three course meals from the mystery basket. The
teams used the core ingredients very well and made delicious and tasty three course meals for
the jury. The members of the jury were Chef Parimal Sawant - Executive Chef, The Lalit, Chef
Kayzad Sadri - Corporate Food & Beverage Manager, Mahindra Holidays, Chef Milan Gupta and
India’s Pop singer turned chef and entrepreneur Anaida Parvaneh – Partner,
Sodabottleopenerwala. It was actually a challenge for the jury to rate the teams as the
innovation and creativity was very high.
Chef Satish Arora was the chief guest while Chef Rakhee Vaswani was the guest of honour for
the award felicitation function. Rakhee told students to use the digital social media to showcase
their innovation and creativity in her speech.
Chef Arora told students to keep cooking and not rust their hands. In this digital age students
have access to information, knowledge and the work of world famous chefs through the
internet. He compared his days vis-à-vis the present and advised students to make use of the
advantages at their command and creatively use proper ingredients in their recipes. He added
that when he was under training with senior chefs, he noticed how the chefs always used the
ingredients secretly.

Ekta Bhargava from Better Kitchen thanked the Principals and HoDs of participating colleges,
sponsors, staff of SRIHM and students for making the challenge a great success.
The event was supported by Everest Masala as title sponsor, Idhayam as edible oil partner,
Coca Cola as beverage partner, Colatta by Paxon International as chocolate partner, AMC India
and Bharat Petroleum as associate partners, Paramus Education as overseas education partner,
Chefs Unlimited as uniform partner, Hamvi as seafood partner, Nestle Professional, United
Distributors and Gamma Energy Drink as gift hamper partners.

Download the high resolution pictures from this link: http://betterkitchen.in/backup/photos.zip

About Better Kitchen:- Better Kitchen! India’s only bi-monthly magazine exclusively devoted to
meet the domestic and commercial kitchen needs and solutions.
Better Kitchen is a platform to disseminate the information, news, views, analysis, review, new
product launch, recipes and more to enrich the end users about the development and new
technologies in the Kitchen. It also connects to manufacturers, dealers, planners, chefs,
caterers, restaurateurs, hoteliers, architects and HIG women.
Contact:- Mrs. Ekta Bhargava, Publisher – Better Kitchen