With restaurants competing not only in terms of the variety of food at The Grub Fest, Riya Sharma finds out that using interesting props has been long passe. These eateries went a step ahead by bringing the whole set-up alive at the venue of the recently concluded festival
Remember the time when you had to cover a long distance to go eat at your favourite restaurant. With time, there came a revolution with food festivals where one could eat, drink and enjoy everything from their delectable offering. But, many would agree that there was one issue that many of us faced while going for food festivals — we could get our delicious wraps or baked goods, but when it came to enjoy the experience in terms of dining, décor and comfort, festivals have often disappointed us.
But this year, as we checked in for some delicious nosh at the Grub fest at Ambience lawns, we saw a beautiful change. As we entered the main area, we thought that we had come in to have a perfect afternoon at a three-storey building restaurant. The Grub Story, is a travelling restaurant with everything to give you the best of experience. Placed in the middle of the festival, the place gives a 360 degree view of the entire festival. As we walked in, chef Mousim Sidana, while giving a quick check to everything, welcomed us and took us for the tour of their high-end set-up. Though the space looks small as you enter, but as you step inside the second floor, it has everything to offer. Whether you need a bar, smoking area, open seating, indoor seating and the USP-open terrace, everything in this three-floored customised shipping containers connected by spiral shaped staircase.
“last year, I also had a small usual stall called the Food Story. But I saw that a lot of people had used props that were interesting than my stall so I wasn’t satisfied. I had to try this one and I shared that with my friend, Arjun who is also the partner of the fest. I came up with the idea of a travelling restaurant and all the three partners loved it. Then, came the difficult part what should we call itIJ So, then we thought of grub and food story coming together as the Grub Story,” shared Sidana.
Though the final outcome looked perfect, Sidana shared with us that it took him six months to implement the whole idea. “We knew that it all looks so good in pictures but we had to decide everything from the frames to the placement of pictures, how the cranes would be coming in and putting everything. It was a tough task as this is a dismantle restaurant which would be travelling to london and Dubai after this,” he added.
The next stall, rather we should call it a restaurant, was PCO & ATM. It gave us the vibe of entering to an old fashioned English bar of the 1970s where everything from shelves to tables all looked withered and vintage-like. Things like globe, and old-fashioned watch with wooden trunks all were kept as the theme of the restaurant. “It was easy to organise all of this. It took us one day to place it all, the whole idea was to keep in the vibe of both the restaurants alive at the venue which is challenging to add quirky elements,” said Eeshaan Kashyap, general manager, ATM.
For the menu, they are making some Scottish British breads, bacon fry and cocktails especially for the festival. The menu is designed in such a way where we have ready to go meals. So it shouldn’t take more than five minutes, it can’t be a fine dining. It is supposed to be a grub where you come and have fun, the idea is to let people try different things. It is all very affordable,” he added.
The next thing that caught our eye was the barbers shots at the Imperfecto and Informal. The innovative use of a barber’s hair-cutting chair is used in the most quirkiest manner. Manish, manager told us, “We make the person sit here, put the cape around and then let them enjoy the cocktail shots which we give straight from our bottles.” At this counter, they have made use of the waste material. A sofa has been designed from two discarded sofas and use of handpumps and parts of bicycle had been used to decorate the whole seating area.
Another stall which took us to back to the vibe of small melas was of Absolut Vodka. The mela lights in orange, pink and yellow colour with an autorickshaw placed on the side for people, made a perfect selfie spot. “We have launched new vodka flavours of mango and pepper, designed by Absolut India with images of monuments and other historical sites on the bottles. For the festival, we have created cocktails using these new launched vodkas and here we are selling spice gold,thanda, ginger salt and mango chutney flavoured cocktails,” shared Arup from Absolut India.
photo Sanjeev Kumar