The Gathering is a food festival like no other, where 9 chefs and 9 artists come together to create 9 unique dining experiences for one weekend only. Each of the tables at The Gathering, reserved for just twenty guests, draws inspiration from themes of Conservation, Innovation & Exploration. This table brings together Chef Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar and Artist Archana Hande to share their take on Conservation through food and art.

Forbidden. Stolen. Feral. - 5 Course Tasting Menu by Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar X Archana Hande

A collaborative artistic practice between Chef Anumitra of Edible Archives and Archana Hande, Forbidden. Stolen. Feral. explores the histories and biographies of ingredients from the Eastern Himalayas and the Western Ghats. Historically porous, these two regions have been in political ferment for centuries, as sites of control through exploration, trade, conquest, and colonization. And, as humans move back and forth through the margins, so do ingredients and stories- through plunder, exchange, and even as accidental stowaways... until they run wild and take on their own lives.

Centuries of caste and class supremacy are omitted by lauding the diversity of India's foods without speaking about the people who grew them - and were often forbidden from eating them. Ingredients come with stories: moving effortlessly between the realms of myth, rumour, and scientific fact- they shapeshift and dance. For The Gathering, we seek to share a small part of their abundant lore through the food and the experience.

Chef Profile: Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar

For Chef Anumitra every taste becomes an edible archive. The experience of it gets stored as a memory in the body. Thus, Edible Archives, her restaurant in Goa, has an ingredient-driven approach. This venture started out as a food project at Kochi Biennale in 2019 highlighting indigenous strains of rice that have been disappearing since the Green Revolution of 1960. Now, friends say her house smells like an ingredient museum. Who wouldn’t love that?

Artist Profile: Archana Hande 

A creative force who uses diverse mediums such as installation, drawing, and video in her work, she originally trained as a printmaker at Santiniketan and MSU Baroda in 1993. Meticulous and thoroughly researched, she has sometimes even taken 8 years to develop a project. Through her work, she brings out themes of power, industrialization, caste, class and gender. Her most recently showcased mixed-media work, Weaving Light (2021–2023) examines transformations of labour, materiality and technology within Bengaluru’s textile industry.

MENU:

Amuse bouche

Honey, white butter, black pepper, rotti

I

Floral Phantasms: Lotus stem & fresh pea crystal dim sum, roselle broth (v)

Invisible, Incognito: Poached chicken, tree tomatoes, sawtooth coriander, chilies, smoky

broth (nv)

II

Salts & Peppers: Pumpkin flower, golden elephant yam, chayota (v)

Salts of the Earth & Sea: Pork belly, salted mackerel, sun-dried clams, kachumpuli (nv)

III

Three Sisters Samba: corn, beans, pumpkin, Seeraga Samba rice (v)

Congee Caper: pineapple, sweetwater fish, blended rice (nv)

IV

Palate Palette: winged beans, brinjal, breadfruit, beetroot, nutmeg (v)

Forbidden Passion: Chakhao poirieton black rice, pork, taro, passionfruit leaf (nv)

Bangers & Mash: Assorted root vegetables, mutton, tender tamarind leaves (nv)

Dessert

Susegad Serradura: cashew, cream, ginger

Polka Dots: sweet potato, sago bubbles, chia seeds, almonds, coconut milk.