Mangaluru Street Food Fiesta draws to a close; Business roars with multi-state participation

Mangaluru: The four-day Mangaluru Street Food Fiesta ended well for the vendors. The second edition of the fiesta has made its mark among the gourmets of this coastal city and will be a permanent feature of the city in the coming years, according to the chief coordinator, Naresh Shenoy.

“We were not able to quantify the footfalls accurately at this point, but safely, it could be rounded off to nearly 3.5 lakh people in the last four days, which is roughly 70 percent of the population of Mangaluru city,” said MLA of Mangaluru South constituency Vedavyas Kamath. Speaking to Hans India on the sidelines of the four-day event, Kamath said, “I have derived inspiration to hold this event in Mangaluru from similar street food events held in different foreign countries that I visited in the recent past. I particularly liked the one held in Cairo, Egypt, when an entire section of the city transforms into a food exposition, and this is the time when people from many countries throng there, and it is one of the largest tourist events in that country.”

Whoever thought that Mangaluru boasted only of its fish and chicken items and local bread, was surprised by the variety of food spread along 600 metres of stalls lined up in one of the main thoroughfares of the city. In a truly cosmopolitan culinary experience, the gourmets savoured veg, non-veg, snacks, and chaats ranging from the humble Churmuri upkari to the finest of the Maharashtrian, Gujarati, Keralite, Goan, Punjabi, north Karnataka and Malvan dishes were on the offer. The cloud kitchens that were felt only on the food aggregator apps, came live to interact with their online customers and dished out their best creations. “I never thought Mangaluru was so cosmopolitan in matters of food, Now I know what to expect when I come to Mangaluru next time, I have gathered info on the various eateries, both online and brick-and-mortar establishments in the city,” said Inocio Fernandez of Bardez Goa, who is a liquor dealer in Margao. “I hope next time around, they will promote this event in Goa as well,” he said.

On Sunday, thousands from neighbouring Kerala State also took part in the food extravaganza. “I and my family liked the vegetarian fare, which had Konkani and Tuluva dishes, especially the bibbo-tendli upkari, (Cashew and Gherkin melange) raw mango preparations. However, we missed the Brahmin dishes,” said Rizwan Sheikh from Kasargod.

The city has a sizable population of Rajasthani, Gujarati and Maharashtrian origins and many cloud kitchens that served Dhoklas, Khari Rotis, and Khadis, were sold out even before closing time. The young crowd from the local professional colleges thronged to the event on all four days.

The ultra-local crowd, who are overtly cost-conscious however, found the prices of some local items was a rip off.

However they did not grudge it and opined in such mass events costs do overshoot due to logistics problems and the vendors should not go back without a workable profit.

The actual footfalls will be known only after the calculation of the UPI payment transaction is done in a couple of days, says Naresh Shenoy. “It will be an annual feature from now on will be bigger and better.” Shenoy added.