New Delhi: ‘Hawkers’ and vendors will be kicking off a culinary feast this weekend, beginning Friday, the first two of the winter food festivals in the city. You can head for Baba Kharak Singh Marg, where the embattled vendors have come together to host a street food festival which will last till Sunday. Sixteen kilometres away, at Select Citywalk, a number of restaurants will be coming together to host another edition of the Asian Hawkers Market for three days.
The organisers of the Asian Hawkers Market point out that the city boasts of an unmatched array of Asian cuisine chefs. With 31 of the top exponents setting up their food stalls and carts to entice mall hoppers, they promise it will be a culinary treat. “Close to 55,000 people attended the festival last year and this weekend promises to be no different if not better,” they say.
Some of the best Asian cuisine restaurants — like Guppy by ai, Neung Roi, Jade, Eest, Honk, Asia 7, Latest Recipe, Mamagoto etc — will dish out their best bites. It will also be an opportunity for food lovers to get a taste of new restaurants such as Pa Pa Ya and Jom Jom Malay before they actually open. Expect a feast high on satays, dimsums, grilled delights and popular cold beverages from Southeast and East Asian countries. “We want to serve affordable Asian food through some of the best exponents than pack in too many stalls and spoil the fun for food lovers,” said one of the organisers.
‘Chatkhare Dilli ke’, on the other hand, will be showcasing street food from in and around the city on Baba Kharak Singh Marg. Sangeeta Singh of the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI), which promotes the culinary skills of such vendors, said that while initially the festival was to be restricted to Delhi vendors, now there will street food items from Uttarakhand, Chhattisgarh and Punjab too. “Along with popular aloo tikkis and chaats from Delhi, expect Amritsari naan and mutton dishes and Gujarati dabeli stalls,” she says. National coordinator of NASVI Arvind Singh said through this food festival, they want to convey a message to the people of Delhi that the capital is incomplete without street vendors.
After the city gets over this weekend of bingeing and Diwali feasting later on, there is Palate Fest awaiting them in November. With 80 food stalls and discussions on art, fitness, health and technology too planned during the fest, Nehru Park will be teeming with food lovers from across the city.
The owner of a restaurant, who is participating in both Asian Hawkers Market and Palate Fest, said that these festivals made immense business sense for him than hosting one such similar promotion at his outlet. “This festivals are an ideal way of taking your brand to a lot of new customers. We have had instances where people came to try our food after having eaten at these festivals last year,” he said.
