No local cuisine at Gurgaon food awards

Gurgaon, home to multistories and a booming cosmopolitan crowd recently played host to a first of its kind in the city Food Freak Awards, which celebrated scrumptious cuisine.
Shivani Gupta, the Co-founder of Food Freak Awards said that the "ardent foodie" in her wanted to award the best cooks in Gurgaon. Living in Gurgaon for past 10 years, Shivani has seen the growing love for food.
"A decade ago I had to travel all the way to Delhi to have good Chinese food but now I don't have to step out of Gurgaon,: Gupta said after the event.
The award included not only restaurants in Gurgaon but also home bakers.

"We got to know about the awards from their page on Facebook. We followed it and then gave in our entries. It's a fabulous opportunity especially for home bakers like us," said Sonica Singh who won the jury award in the 'Best Home Bakers' category.
Celebrity chef cum host of 'Masterchef India' Kunal Kapoor who stays and works in Gurgaon was a judge on the panel.

"It's nice to see food as a business is growing. The best thing about Gurgaon is there is no show-off. They are humble and focus on delivering the best, unlike Delhi and Mumbai where they try to create a lot of buss," says Kapoor.

However, the Gurgaon food did not have any thing regional. From North India to Spanish, the participants had mastered all but no one included the local, Haryanvi cuisine.
"Local Haryanvi food needs to pump up. The cosmopolitan food from outside Gurgaon is coming in but the regional touch was missing," said chef Kapoor who The chef is also the author of an upcoming cookbook, "A Chef in Every Home."
Agreed Chef Sabyasachi Gorai, popularly known as Saby, who was also judge.
Gorai who has been awarded the 'Best Chef of India' by ex-President Pratibha Patel, said, "I didn't see any local touch. May be people need to put in more effort in this regard. There was nothing Haryanvi. Mumbai in that case puts in effort to make their local food popular."

Except for the missing local food, Gorai felt that Gurgaon has a younger demography that loves to experiment with food. "I didn't realize Gurgaon has so much to offer. On the tasting sessions, I ate all the food that was served and ended up gaining 5 kilos," Gorai said with a laugh.
The seven jury members selected people on their each day's performance. "You might have been good yesterday but if today you are not good, you lose. That's the reason we have many surprise winners. Some of my favourites could not make it since the evaluation was on a daily basis and may be on the last day, they faltered," Gorai said.

The city connection made the awards so popular that 1 lakh plus people voted for their favourite restaurants to make their choice win the popular award.
"We got to know about this from our friends. It sounded geographically connected. Gurgaon food, only people related to Gurgaon sounds fun," said Supriya Saboo from Khaugali Deals, the trophy sponsors.
Co-founder Shivani said she wants to make it an annual thing and take it to cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore and also involve the celebrity quotient to it.
"We also plan to take it to Singapore as well," said Shivani. She also wants to come up with booklets on eateries.

The jury reviewed 100 plus restaurants, had 110 nominations and 22 categories.