The third Indian Hospitality Awards and Summit that took place at the Leela Ambience Gurugram perceived a dedicated session over the ‘Disruptive force in F&B: Serving the guest a different experience’.

IN SPITE of having an enormous amount of standalone restaurants, the gap between the hotel dining sector and standalone used to be massive. But, from few years one can witness the competition and the overlapping of both the identities. For the F&B people of the industry, there now lies a challenge to bring innovation in food.

The third Indian Hospitality Awards and Summit that took place at the Leela Ambience Gurugram perceived a dedicated session over the ‘Disruptive force in F&B: Serving the guest a different experience’. Panellist for the session was, Manisha Bhasin, Senior Executive Chef, ITC Maurya; Alex Moser, Executive Chef, Andaz Delhi; Abhishek Basu, Executive Chef, The Park, New Delhi; Priyam Chatterjee, Executive Chef, QLA and Y B Mathur, Executive Director, Culinary Design and Application Group.

The panel discussed the importance of persistent food quality in order to bring innovation. Chatterjee sites an example of QLA where he continuously tries to bring innovation with food without disturbing the taste buds. Moreover, he feels that there are no such limitations for a restaurant running under a hotel. Agreeing over to him, Bhasin who heads the kitchen of ITC Maurya, said, “ITC Maurya is doing extremely well and our focus on quality and consistency of food has been the reason behind it.”

Moser speaking about the concept of ‘AnnaMaya’ told how he is using natural tradition way of sourcing good quality ingredients in terms of bringing innovation. Basu felt that the need of an hour was ensuring better manpower in the kitchen which is disrupting the industry.

The gala event also witnessed a panel on discussing the importance of clean air for hotel guests. The eminent panellist was, Dhananjay Kumar, General Manager, The Suryaa, New Delhi; Arvind Chabra, Country Head, Blueair; Zia Shiekh, CEO, Svenska Hotels and Nitin Nagrale, Vice President Materials at Foodlink Restaurants and Catering India and Founder and General Secretary HPMF.