All roads in the city lead to Whispering Stones where the fifth edition of The Gourmet Bazaar begins today. With nearly 90 participants signed up this year, besides the local entrants, there are stalls from Chennai, Tirupur, Salem, Pondicherry, Dehradun, Kolkata, Kochi, Kodaikanal, Hyderabad and Ooty.
Put together by Kanika Khanna, Prema Goenka and Shikha Bagaria, the event is themed ‘The GenNext’ this year with food and homemade craft stalls created especially ‘by kids for kids’. Schools like Yellow Train, CS Academy and Helen O’Grady along with some interested parents have put up stalls and believe that this experience will teach the kids the commercial and marketing aspects of a business.
For city fashionistas, there is a new concept this time — called High Street. Curated by Plumeria boutique with fashion brands like Priyanjoli and home décor brands like Mulberry from Hyderabad, Chennai and Bengaluru, this section is all about urban fashion and jewellery, lifestyle accessories. Also expect a vast range of exotic plants and flowers, assorted handmade home décor accessories, as well as organic natural skincare and fine jewellery alongside a variety of gourmet desserts, artisanal cheese and a luxury lounge organised by Juicy Chemistry to experience their products.
With a wide variety of cuisines at the Pop-Up Café, like cuisines varying from Coorgi, Kerala, traditional Mughlai, Mangalorean & Rajasthani, European, Mexican, Japanese, traditional South Indian and North Indian fare, there are also chaats, starters and all-day snacks, grills and barbeque. Also expect cold-pressed juices, teas, old-school goli soda, natural juices, mocktails and shakes.
Say cheese
Nari Shakti Puraskar awardees Namrata Sunderasan and Anuradha Krishnamoorthy who founded the Chennai-based Kase Cheese three years ago are here with promises of starting production in Coimbatore soon! With no added preservatives, emulsifiers or additives, Kase has a lineup of exotic cheese varieties and pickled cheeses including mustard, chilli, mango, cumin seed, thyme and aged. They are known for procuring milk locally only from ethical farmers to make artisanal cow milk cheese. Besides cheese, Kase also makes desserts like salted caramel cake, white gourd and ginger jams, and spreads like Green Tomato for the local market on a made-to-order basis. `300-`400 for 200 gms of cheese.
Vegan paradise
Coimbatore-based Aravindhan V has given vegans all over an ice cream that they can savour. A lover of ice creams himself, he decided to experiment with coconut milk hence the name Cocolicious.“The company is just five-months-old and will be debuting its vegan variants like ragi, ginger, guava and papaya, which are the first to use brown sugar instead of white and actual seasonal fruits like guava and papaya instead of artificial flavouring.” He adds, “We are planning for a complete range of coconut-based products like coconut sugar and sweets and desserts made from it. A single scoop of this vegan delicacy is just `50 and has a refrigerator life of up to forty-five days.
Passion for fruits
Bringing the fresh produce of Nilgiris and Gudalur in a bottle is Kochi-based Rachel’s Orchard. Owned by Teena and Jerry Thomas, the company that began two years ago will be debuting their mosambi and blackberry concentrates, adding to their much popular passion fruit and lemon & ginger. They have six to seven different flavours and do not use preservatives and colour. Besides fruit concentrates, they also offer blackberry and strawberry jams and a unique lemon and dates pickle derived from grandma’s recipe. `330 for 500 ml of concentrate and `200/250 for pickle and jams respectively.
Satiny smooth
Brothers Rahul and Rohit Ramachandran’s passion for food and to give Coimbatorians a tase of better ice cream, led to the beginning of The Dairy House. Debuting this year will be their popsicles range like French vanilla and chocolate therapy along with the Coimbatore’s first macaroon ice cream sandwich. With unique flavours like filter kaapi caramel, cotton candy, lemon ginger and strawberry tart, Rahul says, “One has to taste the ice cream to feel the difference of flavours and texture.” All ice creams range between `60-`80 and have a shelf life of one year.
Recipe in a box
Radhicka Agarwaal, the runner up of the first season of MasterChef India and the author of The Daily Gourmet Cookbook along with her sister Gauricka Agarwaal began The Daily Gourmet in Dehradun in 2012. With an exclusive range of gourmet ingredients like dried blueberries and cranberries imported from the USA, they also offer eight varieties of Pancake Mixes (like Cinnamon, Chocolate) and Muffin Mixes like (Dark Chocolate, Victorian cake), eggless mixes for vegans and Cranberry/Blueberry and Oats for the health-conscious, handmade with no additives or preservatives. Ranging from `125-`350, all products have a shelf life of six months.