Woman chef from Odisha promotes Odia cuisine on TV show

Bhubaneswar:  “Take your passion and make it happen”. .. This line from a song of 1983 Hollywood romantic drama Flashdance fits well for this Odisha woman. Meet Sneha Senapati, who has been promoting Odia cuisine since past couple of years. A step forward in her pursuit, she will be featuring in a cooking competition aired on Zee Cafe.

Hailing from Bhubaneswar, Sneha will be showcasing her culinary skills at the reality show titled ‘ Chef Vs Fridge’.

With limited ingredients available in the fridge, she presented Odia dishes using ‘leftover’ stuffs and won hearts of judges — Chef Vicky Ratnani and actor-comedian Gaurav Gera.

Sneha is the contestant of Episode-10 in 12-episode-show ‘Chef Vs Fridge’ pitted against Anuj Satam, from Maharashtra.

The episode is scheduled to be aired at 8.00 PM on Zee Cafe and 10.30 PM on Zee Cafe HD today. The show can also be viewed @Zee5 on OTT media platform.

Chef Vs Fridge is a reality cooking competition in which talented chefs come together to prepare unique cuisines with limited and random ingredients stocked in their fridge.

Sneha impressed the famous chef Vicky Ratnani and actor Gaurav Gera through her culinary skills by presenting Odia cuisine.

“I created an Odia platter for which I prepared rice, chicken gravy, badi chura (an authentic Odia cuisine) and a typical Odia dish of roasted tomato with cucumber, finely chopped onion and tamarind paste. There was an instruction to prepare items from leftover things by adding some other elements to it,” Sneha told the Sambad English.

When asked about the feedback of the judges on her presentation at the show, she said, “They just loved my dishes as they had never tasted Odia food before.”

The 35-year-old Sneha, who works with an MNC, wants to promote the Odia cuisine not only at national level but also on international platforms.

“Cooking is my passion and I want to promote authentic cuisine of Odisha on different platforms so that people can ascertain the uniqueness of Odia food flavours outside the State,” Sneha said.

The young chef has been organising a food festival in partnership with a few restaurants in Mumbai in past 3-4 years.

“I have organised 3-4 food festivals in Mumbai. I receive positive feedback from people who visit the event titled ‘Odia Bhoji’. For Mumbaikars, the Eastern Indian dishes refer to mostly Bengali food. As they are not aware of Odia food, they appreciate Odia cuisine which is the best in taste as well as low on oil with all nutritional values,” Sneha said.

Besides food festival, she also provides Odia food items at doorsteps on every weekend.

“The chief goal is to promote Odia food not only in Mumbai but also across the world,” Sneha said.