Carrying forth the festive celebrations at Christ College, was their Hotel Management department which recently held its departmental fest. A national level competition, the fest was organised in association with The Taj Group of Hotels. “We have had an association with the Taj group for almost 13 years now. We are one of the few colleges to have a tie-up like this,” said Ratish Thambu, HOD, Department of Hotel Management. Highly competitive and highly regarded in the hotel management circles, this fest had two major events- the Chef Competition and the Hotel Ability Test (HAT) competition.

The chef competition covered the culinary aspect with two rounds. “In the preliminary round, we have to create a maincourse. My team-mate and I decided on an Oriental menu. The finals had a twist to it- we were required to prepare a meal using ingredients that are available within a 100-km radius of our college. So, naturally we prepared Hyderabadi cuisine. The competition was really tough and we had a time limit of three hours. Also, there was a lot of pressure on us as it was a live cooking competition and the judges were watching us while we were cooking!” says a finalist - M Raja who along with his team-mate Lambert Chian was representing the Culinary Academy of India, Hyderabad.

The HAT comp was looking for managerial qualities in these students. It had various rounds like ‘Best Manager’ which involved stress interviews and case study presentations, budding critic, product repositioning and quiz.

“This is a very stressful competition because we aren’t given much time to prepare. But it is a great experience for us because it takes care of all the skills and knowledge required to be a good manager,” said a finalist, Pooja Bailey who along with Kunal Chandrapal was representing Christ College. “The students put in a lot of effort, our preliminaries were held over three weeks ago. The enthusiasm shown by the students is wonderful. In fact, one of our students, Sitara H, a finalist in the Chef comp, actually did her research on local cuisine by travelling to nearby villages. The students are also very innovative in the competitions,” said Ratish Thambu.

The competition also featured well-known names from the industry like Chefs Sandeep Kachroo, Abhijit Saha and Venkatesh Bhat of The Taj Group, The Park and South Indies respectively. Says Murali Mohan Rao, Training Manager, Le Meredian, who was a judge for a HAT event, “This is a good platform for the students because they get some exposure to real-time situations. They think and act like they would when faced with problems in the career. This is a great opportunity because they learn so much more than what they would in the classroom.”
The winner of the chef competition and the overall trophy was Welcome group’s WGSHA from Manipal and the HAT competition was won by Christ College.