The Marathi fine dining dream

Makarand Bhave in a still from the ‘docu'

Imagine a plate of pristine white, well rounded, ukdiche modaks lined up neatly, on a narrow rectangular plate, being brought to you, in the hands of a uniformed staff member at a well-heeled fine-diner. If you are having trouble visualising this, take a look at the trailer of Shank's, a film directed by Ashay Dileep Javadekar, that has garnered over 2,00,000 views in less than two weeks of hitting the Internet. The story of Shank's, which is about a Maharashtrian chef living in the US and setting up the world's first Marathi fine-dining restaurant, seems to have intrigued many. Javadekar has been getting calls and messages from chefs and people telling him how inspired they are by the idea. Many even expressed a desire to meet the chef and sample his fare, which is when Javadekar had to burst the bubble -- Shank's is a work of fiction.

Varan Bhaat

"The thought behind it was to promote Marathi cuisine in the West especially, where most Indian food gets lost in North Indian and South Indian stereotypes," says Javadekar, over a telephonic conversation from Delaware, that has been his home for 11 years now. "Let me clarify, I have nothing against those cuisines, I love them. But the fact is, the West is unaware of the extent of our culinary diversity and that bothers me. I took up the subject of Marathi cuisine, because of my roots of course. But, my intention is to open a dialogue and make people think in other directions, when it comes to Indian food," he says. Born and raised in Sangli, Javadekar moved to Mumbai to pursue a degree in chemical engineering, before jetting off to the US to do his PhD in 2005. "Filmmaking has always been a serious passion and I have been doing it for eight years now," says the chemical engineer, whose short films have been screened at festivals in the US, Spain and Melbourne.

Matkichi Usal

People's curiosity to find out more about the chef (who doesn't exist) has given the trailer a lot of traction. "I didn't have any intention of leading people in a certain direction -- this happened organically and it seems to have worked for the film. The response has been phenomenal," he says. "It's a fictional documentary, which is a well-recognised genre of filmmaking but new to Marathi films. I wanted to explore what a Marathi fine-diner would feel like. I designed the restaurant from scratch, set up the interiors, designed the menu. While my wife Madhura and her friends cooked the food that you see in the film, my friend Nitish Vasudevan, a former restaurateur, helped with the food designing. The film shows Marathi staples like matkichi usal, varan bhaat, ukdiche modaks, puran polis, all served on a fine-dining platter. I also designed the meal courses, which follow the traditional pangat style in weddings, where food is served in a certain order."

He adds that what he found interesting while making the film, was that many actors, including non-Indians, began to become more aware about Marathi food while doing the film.

Ashay Javadekar

Currently, Shank's is on the editing table and is expected to release in March next year. Javadekar says that when he serves the typical Maharashtrian fare to his American guests at home, it is received well. "They are always curious. When it comes to food, people don't know what they want until they try it. So the awareness needs to be created, more possibilities need to be opened up. Shank's is my small way of doing that," says the filmmaker.