Try out these social dining platforms for a unique meal experience

Meal sharing platforms like MealTango and Once Upon My Kitchen bring the international trend to India

“You are my first guests, so please take these,” says a beaming Anu, garlanding my friend and me as we enter her apartment just after 1 in the afternoon for a home-cooked Mangalorean meal. While we settle down and chat with her mother, Anu and her niece return to the kitchen to add the finishing touches to lunch, popping back in to serve us glasses of cold buttermilk. “We call it majjige, and the mint on top is from my own garden,” she says. Lunch is soon served and we sit down to a meal of egg cutlets cooked Kundapur style, Pijjamma’s pepper fry, a dry chicken starter made according to her grandmother’s recipe, kori masala (Mangalorean chicken curry), thuppada anna (ghee rice), gherkins cooked with grated coconut and cashew, raita, rasam and papad. In between urging us to take multiple helpings, Anu’s mother tells us what life used to be like in Mangalore and Kundapur on the Konkan coast. “Those days, when our relatives, visiting from Bombay, went back, they would take fish cooked in an earthen pot, with coals on top, so that there was heat from above and below. We don’t really make it that way anymore,” she reminisces.

 

 

Pijjamma’s pepper fry, made according to Anu's grandmother’s recipe 

 

Now, this might sound like lunch with an old friend or relative. But here’s the catch — Anu and I have never met before. She has essentially invited two strangers home and cooked up a storm, churning out traditional Mangalorean food and letting us get to know her and her family, for a fee. Unusual way to dine out? Yes, it’s a part of a recent international trend known as “social dining” which has now found its way to India. You can find the meal you might like to try out online, through meal sharing or social dining platforms such as MealTango, which was how I had “booked” a meal at Anu’s house.

Ironically, MealTango founder Saket Khanna says when they launched the site last July, they had been looking at connecting hosts and guests in countries abroad, including London, where he used to live before relocating to Pune with his wife and co-founder, Neeta Valecha. “We never thought of India as a market! We were shell-shocked by the response,” he says. Starting with 10 hosts in two countries, MealTango has expanded to 100 hosts across 14 countries, including the Japan and Italy. In India, the company has hosts in the metros as well as smaller cities such as Jabalpur. Over five hundred customers have made use of the platform for a meal, so far. This number, says Khanna, is growing exponentially and several are repeat customers.

 

While Valecha thought up MealTango after an Air BnB guest at their London flat waxed eloquent about her aloo parathas, it was conversations about authentic local food with fellow expatriates on the Cayman Islands that led Sheetal Rajasekharan to launch Once Upon My Kitchen in February. “Fundamentally, we believe home food rocks. And this would be a fun easy-going way to experience great local food and meet new people,” says Rajasekharan, who is based in Mumbai. Currently, Once Upon My Kitchen has 300 hosts in Delhi and Mumbai and is looking to expand to cities like Bangalore and Chennai soon.

 

Coming up at MealTango, a specialist in unique dining experiences, is a horse race with an English breakfast, offered by a stud farm owner in Pune

On both sites, you can choose to have a meal where it would be just you (and whoever you take along) and the host or “events”, where you would be part of a group of diners. There are also a variety of experiences to choose from since, as Rajasekharan puts it, there is such a variety of food in this country. An upcoming event on MealTango, for instance, offers the chance to sample the cuisine of the Pathare Prabhu community. “They were the original inhabitants of Maharashtra and yet you will not find a single restaurant offering this cuisine,” says Khanna. The platform started as a dining-at-home website but it has now expanded to a unique dining experience, he adds. On the cards next year, is a horse race with an English breakfast, offered by a stud farm owner in Pune.

While social dining gives guests the chance to sample some authentic home-cooked fare, hosts are motivated by the chance to channelise their passion for cooking and meet a variety of people. “The fact that somebody is willing to pay for the food I have cooked is also a great ego boost,” says Sunita Pradhan, a Once Upon My Kitchen host in Mumbai, who has a day job as a dentist. “I always try to sample local food when we travel abroad, so I thought this was a great concept,” she adds. On her part, Anu says she was inspired by her sister in Malaysia who is part of a global meal-hosting site and regularly entertains guests, mostly foreign travellers.

 

Once Upon My Kitchen has 300 hosts in Delhi and Mumbai

While it is still a fairly niche concept, there seems to be enough interest in India for global startups such as Brussels-headquartered bookalokal.com to also tie up with Indian hosts. Another social dining site in the US, eatfeastly.com, also confirms that there have been a lot of requests from India, both from chefs as well as guests.

The platforms offer a variety of pricing options and the companies say, though hosts have complete freedom in deciding the amount, they often guide them. The Mangalorean meal I have is priced at Rs 999. The amount, I could quibble, is a bit steep for a “home made” meal but then again, the premium is for the entire experience. And with more Indians willing to explore unique dining options, social dining could well be a concept whose time has come.

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Hunt for a meal that suits your palate and pocket on MealTango, Once Upon My Kitchen  or www.bookalokal.com