A feast for the eyes

When a non-filmi entertainment television show matches up to the success of a Bollywood one in a country obsessed with stars, it’s no mean accomplishment. MasterChef Australia achieved this distinction—it was, says Saurabh Yagnik, GM and Senior VP of English Channels at Star India, as widely watched as Season Three of Koffee with Karan.
Who would have thought that television viewers would be hooked to a show in which a group of Australians prepared dishes that most Indians had never heard of, under the gaze of four beefy judges who look more like bouncers than gourmands? And that too with the same enthusiasm that they watched overdressed actors tear into their colleagues while sipping coffee? Clearly, food shows, which began on a tentative note with Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazana years ago, could now give even saas-bahu bilge some competition.
In the West, entire networks are dedicated to food programming and the popularity of food shows has made celebrities out of chefs like Gordon Ramsay (who plays the abusive Brit who makes girls cry), Nigella Lawson (her enormously calorific recipes are justified by her voluptuous body; it’s alright to consume kilos of butter if it can make you look like this, she seems to suggest) and Anthony Bourdain (the macho traveller who snacks on bugs in Asian wildernesses as if they were peanuts). Indian TV seems to be heading in a similar direction.
In January, Sanjeev Kapoor, India’s most well known TV chef, launched a food channel emphatically titled Food Food. Kapoor hosted Khana Khazana, a cookery show that ran for 19 years on Zee TV till eight months ago. “I think there has always been a demand for food shows,” he says. “But there comes a time when a realisation of the masses happens. That has come now.”
What is it that’s so attractive about food shows? It’s hard to imagine that people actually cook the stuff they watch on television, especially dishes whose ingredients are not locally available. “A food show is not just about adding tamatar and dhaniya,” says Rajiv Bakshi, VP, Marketing, South Asia, Discovery Networks Asia-Pacific. Discovery’s TLC channel runs between five and eight food shows every quarter. “It’s good-looking television. It’s about going to places and buying ingredients and for you to know they exist.”
Karen Anand, a food writer and consultant, agrees that television shows teach viewers the vocabulary of food. “General knowledge about food is increasing,” she says. “When you go to a restaurant, you know what you’re ordering and what you’re being served.”
The ultimate example of food as entertainment is the reality show. Programmes such as MasterChef, Top Chef and Hell’s Kitchen excite viewers more with the drama of competition than with food education. “They’re largely about the people in them,” Anand says. “It’s about the underdogs and how they struggle. The food is secondary. But if it’s a means by which people are going to watch food, then fair enough.”
Kapoor says that TV programmers have understood that TRPs are directly proportional to the amount of sympathy a show generates. That’s why viewers are shown the back stories of contestants in reality shows and given intimate glimpses of their lives. “People empathise with those who are competing,” he says. “Viewers can relate to them.”
Commentators in the US have wondered about the popularity of food shows. More Americans might be watching food programmes but that doesn’t mean they’re actually cooking. Kapoor insists that in India, people watch food shows with the idea of replicating what they see in their kitchens.
Pankaj Bhadouria, the winner of the first season of MasterChef India, believes that the online feedback she gets indicates that viewers are really following her recipes. Bhadouria, who lives in Lucknow, now hosts her own show, Chef Pankaj Ka Zayka. Her target audience, she says, is North Indian. “The most important thing about my show is that everything I do is doable and the ingredients are easily available in places like Bhopal and Raipur,” she says.
Bhadouria adds that apart from teaching home cooks how to experiment with food (her recipe for tiramisu replaces mascarpone with hung curd), food programmes have made cooking a respectable profession in small towns. By the end of January, Bhadouria will wear another badge of success. Myrra, her first restaurant, will open in Lucknow. “Earlier, if you said you wanted to be a chef, people would say, ‘Halwai banega kya?’” she says.