Anushka Phatangre is a student undergoing B.Sc. In H & H A degree programme at this institute. As a part of the final year curriculum, he/she has undertaken a group research project titled “The authentic cuisine of Nagaland: A descriptive study.” 

Signed,

Ms.Maria Fernandes
Research Co-ordinator
Rooms Division

Hello!

I am Anushka, a student currently pursuing hospitality in Mumbai. Food and culture have been a great part of my life. I am a complete science lover and an avid reader. I joined hospitality because it is an industry of service to the people where you meet people from different walks of life and get to know their stories. Food is something very dear to me. With my team of 5 people Aaryan, Aastha, Ankit, and Avinash, including me I am conducting research on The Cuisine of Nagaland.

I spent my childhood in Gujarat and then came to my hometown in Maharashtra. Living somewhere that wasn’t my home state was an experience and a fortunate event of my life. Just like me, I met a lot of people who came from different places: Delhi, Jaipur, Chennai, Surat, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab to name some. Thus, I was exposed to these cultures since childhood and knew that this is what my country represents. But like every child, I had a class called Social Studies in school. The map of India always intrigues me because of the vastness of the land and the cultures. This was when I realized that my country had a part that I didn’t know of. My father used to travel for work back then and he visited some parts of the northeast of India and I got to know about them too.

But one place that always remained unexplored for me was The Falcon Capital of the World – Nagaland. And when I got an opportunity to research about a topic of my choice as a part of my curriculum in college, I knew exactly what to do. I chose to research the underexplored Cuisine of Nagaland and with the support of my teammates we brought the idea to life.

Being unaware of the cuisine myself, I hadn’t had Naga Food ever. The first time I experienced it was in Mumbai at a café where I had Naga style pork from Meiphung Oriental. This remains my only but a fantastic experience of having something authentically Naga. I wish to visit more of such restaurants and try the signature dishes now that I spent half of 2020 reading about such amazing food. I wish to get in touch with legendry chefs like Karen Yepthomi, Joel Basumatari and many more.

I also believe that the reason behind the food from Nagaland and the entire North-Eastern part of India being underexplored to different extents is people not being aware of the secretly mind-blowing food. My team has therefore picked this topic to increase this awareness and make a little contribution to the process of giving Naga cuisine much-deserved recognition.

And to succeed in this, we request all of the readers of Roots and Leisure from Nagaland to please fill out a little survey questionnaire [HERE]  and forward it to more people you know.

Thank you,

Anushka Phatangare