The Ultimate Supper Club: The Kindness Meal Introduces You To Native Cuisines

Food is the ultimate carrier of culture and history. It sustains narratives, myths, legends, and lineages while nurturing the soul and body. From sourcing ingredients and preparation all the way to how it's consumed, every aspect of food relays life stories and heritage that ultimately constitute communities that intersect cross-culturally. As South Asians, food has been an integral part of our identity, with a variety that embodies the diversity of our people. And though globalisation has created a new cult following for 'Indian food' specifically, there is no denying that a certain level of homogenisation has taken place with it, leading to some of the more niche dishes losing their place in the mainstream culinary world.

This brings me to an interesting project I found known as The Kindness Meal led by Dipali. She aims to map disappearing foods and recipes to the limelight and preserve their origins. 

Launched in 2022, The Kindness Meal was inspired by a small interaction while she was travelling and staying at a homestay in a village. The hostess refused to serve her the same lunch as she was serving her eight-year-old son, saying, 'Yeh gaon ka khana hai' (this is village food). This brought her attention to the systematic internalised shame small communities feel toward their own food and food practices while also sparking her interest in bringing these dishes and delicacies to the centre table.

Her birth state became her project's repository location, where she marked off nine cultural zones within the diverse state of Rajasthan, putting forth all its micro-cuisines. This initiative gave her a larger insight into the contrasting social fabric of the state and the many similarities within the food they prepare among different Indigenous communities. Food represents the geography, economic state, and nutritional understanding of different communities layered with social confluence, with decadent dishes that the world isn't aware of. This marked Dipali's journey of mapping disappearing food and bringing it to centre stage with a curated dining experience tapping into the potential of connecting grassroots communities to the world across. 

The location of each event varies between studios, cafes, and art galleries. Dipali is also starting a hands-on discovery experience this winter, where people can travel to marked-off zones with her to taste the most authentic food. This project is nothing short of beautiful. If you love learning about food and tasting unique delicacies and flavours with a discovery experience like never before, this project is 100 per cent worth checking out. 

Price: Starting at INR 1,800 onwards for a five-course menu. 

After studying and researching a region in depth, Dipali collaborates with chefs and restaurants to develop menus and offer a unique dining experience for their patrons. These curations can also be themed; for example, they created a tea-themed menu, where all the dishes had an infusion of tea selected from a wide selection of teas available in India. Overall, this is the ultimate dream experience for anyone who loves and cares about food and wants to dive deep into the world of culinary art. Also, it has a strict no-phone policy. 

For smaller communities, this project has become a stage to not only show their food but also initiate a process of unlearning the internalised shame and destigmatising their everyday reality. It also saves the loss of significant delicious delicacies and cultures.

It creates a demand for niche ingredients, which helps us avoid relying on overcultivated ingredients like potatoes and tomatoes. This, in turn, helps the farmers and the environment overall. 

We love the fact that you can easily learn more about the recipes, stories, and memories associated with the food of each community through their website.