Bhubaneswr, Oct. 5: Odia travellers can now enjoy their favourite dishes while flying to Delhi.
Vistara, the joint venture between Tata and Singapore Airlines, has introduced Odia cuisines in the in-flight menu for the first time in its Delhi-Bhubaneswar flights.
The Bhubaneswar-New Delhi route, for which the service started with an evening flight on October 1, has introduced typical Odia dishes such as ghuguni, chhena poda, chhena kofta and machha tarakari as the in-flight menu to woo Odia travellers as others operating on the route so far have followed a continental and pan-Indian menu.
While ghuguni is a popular Odia curry of green peas and potato, chhena poda is an Odia sweet dish of baked cottage cheese and chhena kofta is the curry of cottage cheese balls with spicy gravy. Machha tarakari is the fish curry in pure Odia style. "We have introduced the local cuisine to give a personal touch to our Odia customers or those, who are travelling in the Delhi-Bhubaneswar sector, as air travellers hardly get the experience of their own food in the in-flight menu. The menu, on the other hand, will also change every week. Moreover, our menu will include both continental and Indian dishes," said Vistara's corporate communications head Rashmi Soni.
For the Odia travellers, it seems that the way to their heart is indeed through their stomach. The non-Odia travellers, too, appreciated the novel menu. "I enjoyed the in-flight food. They served me something like an Odia sweet dish similar to a cake, and it was wonderful. When I asked what was the name, the flight attendants told me that it was chhena poda," said D.K. Verma, a businessman based in Bangkok. Verma is visiting Odisha for the second time on a business trip.
Cuttack-based businessman R.K. Gupta, who came from Delhi by a Vistara flight, said: "For the first time, I enjoyed local food on my air trip, and I liked it very much."
Other players such as Air India, IndiGo and GoAir, on the other hand, have a standardised menu with no stress on the local flavour. Both the lunch and dinner and the snacks of all three players consist of a menu with pan-Indian dishes. Snacks mostly include samosa, various types of sandwiches, wraps, south India snacks, vegetarian biryani, soups, juices, nuts, cookies, popcorn and murukkus (rice-based south-Indian fried snack). "Our menu includes only pan-Indian food stuff, and we never found any necessity to add local cuisine in the menu since travellers might not belong to the cities of travel," said Air India station manager, Bhubaneswar, Tapas Ray.
Travel planner and adviser Debashish Mohapatra said: "Odias have many favourite dishes such as dahi vada aloodum and the airline people can pack it hygienically and use it as an USP to attract fliers. Innovations in touching people's lives will definitely pay dividend in an industry, where the first experience is going to make an important impact."
In another development, Vistara today introduced a morning flight, which reached the city airport at 10am. It flew back to Delhi at 10.40am. With this flight, Vistara has two (morning and evening) services to the city from the national capital.
