For the fifth edition of The Bombay Canteen (TBC)’s Independence Day Daawat, the restaurant has teamed up with Naandi Foundation to raise funds to support the Adivasi farmers of Chedu Put village in the Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh. “As TBC has evolved, our relationship with farmers and with agriculture experts has evolved, and we have learnt more about the ecosystem that we function in. Today we live in a world where we can walk into a restaurant or order food at a click of a button, but how aware [are we] about what’s going into the food coming into our cities and onto our plates,” asks Sameer Seth, Partner at TBC. He adds, “You realise that almost 85% of the farmers in India are small and marginal farmers.”
For TBC, the impetus for the Independence Day Daawat was to change the idea that, August 15 was just another holiday or a dry day. “We wanted to get everyone involved and celebrate India again,” says Seth. From 2015 when the restaurant served about 180 people and raised ₹1.8 lakhs for Teach For India to 800 guests donating ₹20 lakhs to the Miracle Foundation in 2018, the Independence Day Daawat has grown into an annual event for food loving Mumbaikars.
For this edition, Seth and Yash Bhanage, (TBC Partner) met Manoj Kumar, Director and CEO of Naandi Foundation, and in June they took a trip to the Araku Valley to see the work the foundation does at ground level. “We spent three days there and it was phenomenal to see the level of depth they have gone to, to create that whole ecosystem. The idea is not just to give farmers charity but to look at their livelihood as a whole, look at crops such as coffee and black pepper that give them income but also at other crops that gives them nutritional security. Naandi has also created a whole ecosystem around skilling people on farming practices (see box),” elaborates Seth.
Beyond farm-to-table
Naandi will use the funds raised from this year’s daawat in a three-pronged approach at Chedu Put. “One is to get farmers access to better and diverse kind of seeds, (secondly) create better infrastructure for their farms, and finally into skilling the farmers, which allows them to learn sustainable practices. Our hope is that this is just a starting point; it take six years to get an acre of land to a point where this model is functional, so this is something we want to be actively involved in over a period of time,” says Seth. TBC will also hold The Canteen Class for select students on August 14 conducted by Kumar and Araku’s chief agriculture expert David Hogg. “As a team we are passionate about being able to understand how we can sustainably continue to function as a restaurant,” explains Seth.
On the plate
The daawat will be a veritable feast comprising dishes using ingredients from across 16 states. There’s Bengali Lau Ghonto, Tamilian Eggplant Moju, Chicken and Bamboo Curry from Arunachal Pradesh, Punjabi Martaban Mutton Kheema, and more. “This year, we are trying to use our learnings from the wild foods festival (currently on until August 31) and use ingredients from there in the daawat as well. So we have a Bihari Chokha made out of kantola , and Thomas [Zacharias, executive chef and TBC partner) has come up with a dish that uses moras in the form of a vada ,” explains Seth. Accompanying the spread will be chutneys and condiments like Mahua Raita from Madhya Pradesh, Assamese Tomato Chutney, and Maharashtrian Pendhra Pickle. “The idea has always been to present the diversity of regional Indian food on a banana leaf thali. We want people to have a delicious meal and also learn a little bit about the cause we are supporting, and they can pay whatever they want,” adds Seth.
C offee story
The Araku project began in 2001 as a unique social experiment by the Hyderabad-based Naandi Foundation. The non-profit started working with indigenous Adivasi farmers, planting microlots (one acre plots) of coffee, training them on organic and biodynamic farming, composting, etc. “Each plot is looked after by one family, so it’s not one coffee estate but 10,000 individual estates. The foundation works closely with the farmers opening farmer field schools and crèches, and we adopt the girl child through the Nanhi Kali programme. We plant half a million coffee saplings every year and we have also reforested the area with indigenous trees,” explains David Hogg, Araku’s chief agriculture expert. The coffee is 100% Arabica and certified organic by IMO India, an independent certification body for organic agriculture.
The brand Araku was created in 2007 and it launched a flagship store in March 2017 in Le Marais, Paris. ‘Naandi has a long relationship with various French companies that raised funds to help us plant trees in Araku,” says Manoj Kumar Araku’s co-founder. Apart from the store, the brand has 37 points of sale across France in partnership with various gourmet stores. In January this year, Araku launched an online store in India (arakucoffee.in), offering four of its six coffee varietals, as well as coffee accessories like French press, moka pot, coffee mill, drip scales etc.
