The need for student-run cafés in India
and my experience on starting Culinary Club, IIT Roorkee
At Shiok Shack, a student-run café of Yale-NUS college a.k.a. ‘Buttery’, students frequently order the ‘Adlin’ (an instant noodles dish topped with a sunny side up and accompanied by a burger patty) that’s inspired by a student of the class of 2017, Aldin Zainal. As students relish the signature dish of this particular buttery, the cooks and managers(all students of Yale-NUS) eagerly design a new menu for their next session, hoping to make it more exciting than ever before; and aspiring architects and design students come up with ideas for a more appealing theme for the buttery. Shiok Shack is just one of many examples of how a student-run café has encouraged students to become more creative, gain a better understanding of how businesses run, and more importantly establish a community-driven culture that brings professors and students of different nationalities together.
One of my friends who majored in sociology had her thesis in a field that studied how many Indian families are, in a way, losing their identity because family recipes are dying out. Think about it, your grandma probably has this amazing recipe which is unique to your family, but you have no idea how it’s made. Family recipes are dying out, and while sociologists may weep at families losing a part of their identity, I weep knowing that I’m missing out on recipes that cannot be brought back.
While I’m not trying to imply that there’s an immediate need for student-run cafés in the country, there aren’t a lot of activities out there that promote cross-cultural exchanges, management, and interpersonal skills, and of course, the essential life skill of cooking as well as running a café does. Ironically, India, a country known for its diverse spices and rich culinary heritage, has generally lacked a culture of encouraging the younger generation to learn to cook, rendering the prospects of an aspiring chef to be unreal. While household names like Sanjeev Kapoor and Vikas Khanna have made a slight difference, India has remained conservative for the most part and lagging behind countries like USA and France in developing and popularizing it’s cuisine techniques.
In 2017, the team discussed problems that came up with the students’ internships and found out that many faced food problems (especially the ones with a foreign internship). The lack of basic cooking skills compelled them to eat out regularly, or live on instant noodles and chips, which can be agreed upon to be an unhealthy diet. We’ve also realized, after conversations with some of the international students on campus, that there lacks a platform where all the students can come together and interact on a non-professional basis. A lot of the international students are African men who aren’t used to cooking or the generally spicy Indian cuisine, and this compels some of them to visit their embassy on a monthly or bimonthly basis to have a taste of their home food. When asked as to why they didn’t cook for themselves, the most common reply was that they were never encouraged to do so at home (women were normally in charge of the cooking). This case is quite similar to most Indian students who are studying abroad (especially vegetarian).
The idea of Culinary Club, IIT Roorkee came up for all the aforementioned reasons. Started in 2017 (during the odd semester in July), this group has managed to create a gastronomic buzz on campus and has started India’s first student-run café. We currently have a decent-sized space with equipment ranging from ovens and inductions to ice-cream makers and waffle makers. Every weekend, the team comes up with a new menu and makes around 40 of those dishes and sells it at a nominal rate to the students and faculty of IITR. Once a semester, we conduct a cooking competition as a way of getting more students involved in cooking. The competitions are often judged by our faculty members and Wardens
While the initial idea was to host various events to engage the Indian and international students, the group has caught the attention of a lot of the family members of professors as well, most of whom are excited on teaching their recipes to students. One of our events included a food exhibition which was attended by many international students and they were overjoyed on seeing the Indian students cook. I remember some of telling me that they’d like to start cooking as well.
Finally, we’re making our very own cookbook that can be accessed by any student/faculty on campus, the goal is to encourage people to learn about their family recipes and culture (by the way, feel free to share your recipes with us. We’d be glad to include it in our book with due credit).
Personally, I was skeptical if such a café could exist on campus. The notion that people are ‘busy’ and are already engaged in other campus activities made me think I’d never meet the right group of people. But there’s a twist in this obviously predictable story, I met people who not only cook amazing dishes and are as geeky about food as I am, but also people who really want to become chefs themselves and who found this activity something they’d like to be busy with. Small world, huh? I didn’t know many PhD, post doc, or international students before the advent of this club, but the number people I’ve got to know is astonishing. And what’s even more exciting is that different people are meeting each other and bonding deeply over food and recipes. Well, that was the whole idea!
What surprises people, in hindsight, of course, is that how such a simple idea never occurred to anyone before (not that it struck me either, I was introduced to this idea by my friend at Yale-NUS). While art and creativity are encouraged in the every University of India, why is cooking, the one form of art that involves our visual, olfactory, and gustatory senses, held back to such an extent? Well, in my opinion, it’s mostly because cooking is hardly perceived as a form of art and more as unskilled labor by the majority (this sadly includes many working in even the hotel management industry).
Through its activities, Culinary Club IIT Roorkee and the cafe hopes to spread the enthusiasm about food/culinary art to the multitude of people (from a variety of backgrounds) in our campus and through them, even further beyond. In fact, looking at us, other IITs like IIT Kharagpur have started their own Culinary Club and are in the process of setting up their cafes. The Inter-IIT cultural meet, a cultural competition between sister IITs that takes place every December, will now see a culinary competition happen every year (which was initiated and pushed by Culinary Club, IIT Roorkee and I hope this cooking competition keeps happening with a lot of enthusiasm). For me, at the end of the day, if people start valuing chefs and taking the art seriously, I’ll feel that the Culinary Club has achieved something. It’s high time the Michelin guide starts reviewing Indian restaurants.
Culinary Club, personally, was a stepping stone for me as an aspiring chef (I hope so). From the time I was around 13, there’s been this immense passion for food and the thought of becoming a chef came to me countless times. And just like a lot of other students, I succumbed to the expectations of society and made it to IIT Roorkee (not that I repent the decision, I’ve absolutely cherished every moment in my college). Fast forward 4 years, here I am, more passionate about cooking than ever before, dreaming to be the next 3-star Michelin chef and working on my very own cookbook. Maybe, in a way, I want the student-run café to help students pursue their passion. Too many of us not living our dreams because we’re living our fears.
“ My life has been such a blur since I was 18, 19 years old. I haven’t even had time to contemplate my own life. By forcing yourself to write your life story you learn a great deal about yourself” — Grant Achatz
