By Staff Reporter — MUSCAT: March 6 - The ‘Festival of India’ in Oman organised by the Embassy of India, Muscat, with support of the Ministry of Culture of India, from November last year will conclude with a food festival on March 15. The Indian Food Festival will be held at Grand Hyatt Muscat and conclude on March 19. The pricing for the food festival has been still worked out and will be announced in the coming days. Timings will be from 6.30 pm around 11 pm.
Given historical contacts between India and Oman and the presence of hundreds of Indian restaurants in Muscat and other cities, both the people of Oman and expatriate community in Oman are familiar with various facets of Indian cuisine.
The purpose of Indian Food Festival in Muscat is to delight people with some lesser-known culinary traditions of India like Kashmiri, Bengali, Rajasthani and Gujarati cuisine.
The food festival provides Indian food connoisseurs in Muscat an opportunity to enjoy those Indian cuisines which are not readily available in Muscat.
Two chefs, selected by India Tourism Development Cooperation (ITDC), will be visiting Muscat and working during the period of food festival with chefs of Grand Hyatt to prepare special Indian dishes. Chef Vikram Shokeen is presently working at ‘The Ashok’ and caters at Hyderabad House.
He has earlier worked at Hotel Jammu Ashok and has contributed to culinary success of several conferences and events held at Ashok Hotel.
Chef Mohd Imran has been working at Hotel Samrat since 1982 and is a master chef with skills in Indian curries and tandoori food. He also has a working knowledge of regional cuisines like Bengali and Rajasthani cuisines.
The Indian Food Festival will be inaugurated in a grand ceremony on March 15 at 7.30 pm at Grand Hyatt. It will be the concluding grand event of the first ever Festival of India in Oman, which was launched by Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdallah, Minister Responsible for Foreign Affairs, on November 15 at Al Bustan Palace Auditorium, wherein an Indian ballet dance troupe ‘Hritaal’ presented a mesmerising performance. Hritaal troupe had, thereafter, performed in Suhar, Sur and Salalah.
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