Anything that fades out of the markets does not necessarily become extinct. It actually becomes exotic and moves up the ladder. That is what happened to the sun-dried vegetables in Kashmir.
The man behind this shift is hotelier Asif Burza who sensed the significance of the dried vegetables, an indigenous part of Kashmiri cuisine. He invested significantly and created an exclusive menu for his chain of hotels. And it was a success.
“Kashmir is known mostly for Wazwan but when we go back to history it has been adopted by us,” Burza said. “Our identity in food is sun-dried vegetables that we prepare in summers and eat in winters.”
The idea struck Burza when he was outside the state and saw how the hospitality sector has maintained the culture of traditional cuisines at the places they operate. He took it quite seriously. So to promote Kashmiri cuisine he decided to start with some exclusive Kashmiri foods including the dried vegetables. He started with Hoekh Suenfestival from December to February in two of his resorts in Srinagar and Pahalgam. “We have guests from outside state and a few Pandit families who come and taste this food,” Burza said. “We got a very good response last year so we decided to go to a festival so that our young generation should know what we had in past. We have to pass it on.”
But it was not an easy job to start. “We started a trial in 2017 but the final product with the best taste was attained after a series of such trials,” said Irfan Ahmad, the general manager at Fortune Resort in Shalimar, a part of Ahad Group of Hotels. “It took us a year to get this final taste with Kashmir’s oldest food consultant, Omaish Mattoo, who has done a number of Kashmiri sun-dried vegetable festivals outside State, approving it. And it was only after that we launched sort of a publicity campaign.”
Getting the stock of dried vegetables was not an easy job. To maintain the quality, Irfan said, they had to get best of the stocks available in the market, and finally, it was the stock from same old city markets in ZainaKadal and MaharajGunj where they identified 15 vendors who provided them with the best quality dried vegetables. Besides, they had to get new sets of utensils, hand carved copper utensils including plates, bowls and serving spoons to serve the special Kashmiri cuisine.
Burzas are in the hospitality sector from last forty years and now Asif, the third generation leader of the company, believes tourism is not limited to showcasing natural landscapes but means experiencing a place in its totality. “It is experimental tourism and in that, your culture and cuisine plays an important role,” Asif said. “In our resorts, we have tried to show a part of it and have focused on handicrafts like we are showcasing a lot of walnut products here, papier machie and crewel fabrics so that a tourist gets a feel of living in a Kashmiri household rather than in the hotel.” For having more professionals in his business, Burza tied up with ITC in 2012 so that his staff is trained better and is exposed to the best practices. He says culture is within each one of us but showcasing it is different.
Burza says he is not only showcasing the Kashmiri culture to the tourists but is also passing it on to the younger generation who are growing fast with fast foods. “It is our responsibility to tell them what we have grown up with, and pass it on to them so that it gets passed to generation next,” says Burza.
In the last few years, Burza sees a change with the coming up of more restaurants and fast food chains. “Kashmiri people have started eating food outside their homes. People prefer to go out for lunch or dinner with their families. The glass is still half empty but the trend is picking up.”
