CHENNAI: Bland, boring, tasteless — if you’ve had to care for someone at the hospital and couldn’t help but eat there, you’d know we’re describing hospital food here. Well, not much has changed since the start of the pandemic either. That is, except for Adithya Shivpink and Ashwin Kumar of Nei Idly Sambar (NIS) stepping in to offer an alternative — healthy, immunitybooster meals for COIVD-19 patients in two city hospitals.
If word of mouth can be believed, NIS has been quite a success even in these sterile corridors. It was in early 2019 that Adithya and Ashwin, working out of a food truck, delighted the people of Mylapore and Kilpauk with a mouth-watering menu of idli, dosai, upma and pongal. All was well till the virus came to town and the truck had to be put to rest. It was then that they considered distributing food for frontline workers. All it took was an announcement on social media to get the meals rolling out.
Health in mind
“We put out a message on our social media platforms, asking people to donate Rs 50 to provide one meal to a frontline worker. This was a huge success,” says Adithya, a partner at the food joint. It was during one such distribution at one of the corporation offices that he came across a health department official, who requested to taste their food. “We took him to our central ised ki tchen in Mylapore, where he tasted the food and gave us good feedback.
He then suggested that we provide food for the COVID patients and put us in touch with the team from Laksha Hospitals, Mylapore. We leapt on the opportunity,” narrates Adithya. From there, they had the hospital’s dietician guide the team with the kind of dishes that can make up an immunity-booster meal.
“Even the rasam we make at home is filled with immunity- boosting properties. We provide kabasura kudineer, lemon water with ginger, milk with turmeric, protein-rich food, and a different variety of sundal every day. We include garlic in everything as it provides immunity,” he shares.
Besides Laksha, NIS also provides its services to Speed Medical Institute in Arumbakkam and an old age home in Mylapore. While meals for the hospital patients are designed as per their diet chart, the food for people at the old age home is made to be rich in calcium and lactic acid. Now, NIS serves meals for 40-50 people per day.
No room for risk
The NIS team makes sure that all safety protocols are adhered to. All the vegetables are cleaned using turmeric water, the utensils are washed and dried under the sun, and only limited staff work in the kitchen. “We have three people in the kitchen — one head chef, one assistant, and one worker to pack food. They all have to wear hairnets, masks and gloves, and not wear slippers inside the kitchen. We have a no-touch sanitiser dispenser for their use.
We have one person to deliver the food to the hospitals,” he shares, adding that all the batter, podis and masalas are made in-house. NIS will soon offer their services to two more hospitals. While Adithya doesn’t want to stop there, he is also wary of biting more than he can chew. “Once we reach a limit, say of 500 patients a day, we will not take on any more collaborations,” he says. The lockdown has not been kind to the restaurants and Adithya is grateful for the opportunities that have come his way.
“When we provided food for the frontline workers, we even made some special items like fried rice and paneer butter masala, which was personally a fulfilling effort. Now, after this collaboration, we plan to include healthy, immunityboosting dishes to our regular menu, once we return to normalcy,” he says. Here’s looking forward to that Bon Appétit!