Sometimes, all it requires is a conversation to bring about awareness and change, says Aritra Bose, who manages Place to Bee, a slow-food restaurant in the Nilgiris. Aritra is part of the Slow Food Youth Network and a supporter of the Disco Soup movement. “It started about seven years ago in Berlin, but at that time it was called Protest Soup. Against food waste,” he says.
The movement captured the imagination of people and spread around the globe to bring the crisis of hunger and food wastage into focus but in a fun way. “Currently, Disco Soup happens in 40 countries from five continents. “More than 5,000 kilograms of food have been made into 25,000 meals and fed over 10,000 people,” says Aritra.
- Aritra says there is no saying what vegetables will come their way. “We see what we receive and work with it. This is a very basic clear soup, but one that is nourishing and always welcoming on a cold day. Use your imagination and innovation and make it whatever you want it to be!”
- Vegetables: Broccoli, iceberg lettuce, radish, carrot, tomato, potato, coriander, beans
- Other Ingredients: Salt, pepper, lemon and cornflour
- Procedure: Clean the vegetables and segregate them. Chop the vegetables and boil them in a vessel with water for 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper for taste. Add coriander and lemon. Add a bit of cornflour for some body and take it off the stove. Serve hot.
Slow Food, explains Aritra, is about “Clean, Good and Fair”. Place to Bee wants to offer customers healthy food and educate them on the philosophy. For three years, the restaurant has been organising Disco Soup week. “A week before Disco Soup, we get in touch with vegetable vendors and growers. We ask them to keep aside vegetables that will not sell because they are damaged, overripe or discoloured. We pick up these vegetables and fruits, segregate, clean and cook them. The vendors could not fathom why anyone would want to buy damaged goods,” laughs Aritra. “But they did give them to us and we made clear soup. We used zucchini, broccoli, cauliflower, beans and lemon grass!”
- Place To Bee is located in what was the first Bee Museum in the country. On its walls one can see a narrative about bees and how they provide a livelihood for many, besides being indispensable for their ecological role on the planet.
- It is much more than a restaurant and provides a place for hanging out and learning more about the Nilgiris, Slow Food Principles.
- It hosts and promotes activities that help and nurture tribal communities, local food, indigenous flora and fauna and links together consumers, producers and growers through the Keystone Foundation, a not-for-profit trust that has been working with bees, beekeepers, honey and honey hunters since 1993.
- There is also a bed-and-breakfast space for backpackers, bird watchers, the off-road tourist.
Aritra cites an example of how damaged broccoli costs just ₹2 a kilogram while it normally sells at nearly ₹180 a kilogram. “We invited them to the restaurant to see how their vegetables, which would otherwise have been discarded, were used so well. It brings them on to the same page and they now know that, even if vegetables do not look too good, they can give them to us, instead of throwing them away,” says Aritra.
At Place to Bee, Ooty
With the saved-from-the-bin veggies, they made soup that they served free to all those who came to their restaurant. “Guests are curious to know why they have been served this soup free and we explain the no-waste concept. We tell them we’d rather fill bellies than bins.” The guests are very receptive and Aritra observes, “At least on that day, they are mindful and don’t leave food uneaten on their plates. Hopefully, they carry away the thought in their heads.”
- Saving 25% of food waste would be enough to feed 870 million hungry people in the world, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).
- Disco Soup is not just about telling people not to waste food, but also celebrate when they do save food.
While Disco Soup Day is earmarked as April 27, Aritra says the spirit is followed at Place to Bee as much as possible. It is also about eating local and being sustainable. “At our restaurant, the menu is international, but ingredients are local. We use local, organic, wild produce, which means we have daily interactions with indigenous communities. We get wild pepper, lemongrass and honey from the forest. We make crepes with ragi . Our butter garlic rice is made of organic red rice. We make a nice breaded steak and it is topped with a local tomato curry. The chicken wings that we serve are honey-glazed and served with a mustard sauce. The chicken itself is country chicken or naatukozhi, the honey is wild-collected, and the mustard is a tribal mustard,” he points out.
The restaurant believes in keeping things as local as possible, and preparing everything fresh and from scratch. “We try not to store anything in the fridge.”
