Some people eat to live while others live to eat. For those passionate about food, search for good restaurants, recipes and exotic ingredients is a lifelong pleasure. During vacations one starts gathering recommendations on the local food to try, at work pamphlets of new delivery outlets are always welcome and on weekends one is faced with the arduous task of choosing the right place for the perfect night out.
Photos of restaurants and menu cards published online can help you to some extent but when you are about to spend extravagantly it helps to know what the tittle-tattle about the restaurant is.
Shuchir Suri, a passionate foodie, was planning to take a girl out on a date to The Orient Express at the Taj Palace Hotel. He wanted to pair vodka with caviar but was clueless about the type of caviar to order. He wanted to know the price of 30 grams of caviar and started a group on Facebook to seek help. The few friends he added helped him decode the types of caviar on offer. Thrilled with the response he added all his friends to the group and that was the beginning of Food Talk India in January 2013.
Today the closed group has 40,500 members all seeking advice and giving suggestions to help people have a better meal wherever they are. Confused between two restaurants or what to order where? Post it on Food Talk India and you will get an opinion almost instantly.
Shuchir quit his job in October 2013 and partnered with Anjali Batra, who worked for a PR agency, to dedicate themselves full time to their crowd sourced online platform that was buzzing with activity and growing by over a 100 new members a day.
They have six people moderating the group 24 hours a day and Anjali says the effort is on to keep the community a happy place with positive suggestions. They have a strict policy to prevent slander and owners of restaurants are barred from using it to advertise and promote their products.
Today, Food Talk India hosts a number of events for members that are so popular that they sell out within an hour of it being announced.
Dinner with strangers, an event in which you walk in to a restaurant and are seated on a table according to what colour band you are given was a concept that saw foodies experience communal dining. For one diner it even turned into an informal interview and the next week he was working with the CEO he dined next to.
For the more serious connoisseurs of fine dining blind tasting sessions are organised in collaboration with some of the best restaurants and chefs in the city to heighten the dining experience. Guests are blindfolded when the dish is served and they are kept guessing as to what they are eating until the blindfold is removed. It is the ultimate challenge for those who claim to have a keen sense of taste.
Mobile application
93,000 followers on twitter, 1,40,000 followers on Instagram and over 700 hashtags later what Shuchir and Anjali are most excited about is the launch of their mobile application for Android and IOS users. They are calling it Food Talk Plus and it is almost ready to be rolled out. The application will help people build a network of friends who have similar tastes. Users can share details of where they have dined, share pictures, experiences and of course make recommendations to those on their network. It’s like a Facebook for foodies to bond over a common passion without the restrictions that a group page offers.
