Will the 50 chefs gathered at IIT Madras succeed in making a 100-feet dosa ? We watch with bated breath.
“You can start preparing the tava ,” announces chef Vinoth Kumar, squeezing his way to the front of the large crowd that has gathered.
The chefs of Hotel Saravana Bhavan hope to create a Guinness World Record. The previous record of 54.86 feet was achieved by a team from Hyderabad.
“We could have easily made a 60-feet dosa , but we wanted to show our full potential,” says Vinoth Kumar, who heads the team. According to Vinoth, the challenge was to locate a suitable tava to make the dosa . “When I pitched the idea to the management, they were excited. But it was the tava that took longer time than we expected. Fifteen engineers worked day and night to make it possible.”
Everyone seems optimistic about making it into the Record books. The tava is lit. An optimum temperature of 180-200’ Celsius is maintained.
“We are going to use the pulling method,” says Vinoth, as the chefs take their respective positions. The team is divided into different subsets — one each for batter, ghee, and the masters, who are responsible for individual tasks.
Over 37 kilograms of batter made of millets, 9.5 litres of water, and three kilograms of ghee are kept ready. On Vinoth’s command, the chefs begin to carefully ladle the batter on to the sizzling tava . The gigantic dosa takes shape, one ladle at a time. Ghee is drizzled on it and everything seems to be going well.
But then, the mammoth structure breaks to pieces when the chefs try to roll it up to serve it on a plate. The men look disappointed, so does the crowd. They are disqualified.
“The only criteria for the Guinness Record is to make the longest dosa without any damage to its structure,” says Vivek Nair, Adjudicator, Records Management Team, Asia Book of Records.
The chefs don’t want to give up so easily. They try not once, but twice. In the end, they decide to make a smaller dosa . At 82 feet, they enter the Asia Book of Records for making the world’s longest dosa . The audience get to taste the dosa in the end. Who cares if it’s the world’s longest? It’s tasty enough.
