A record number of people thronged the venue of the preliminary round of The Hindu’s Our State Our Taste cooking contest in Gadag on Friday, making it a full house event.
The rules were simple yet challenging and the contestants put up a tough fight. The participants had to cook a traditional Kannada dish or give an interesting twist to the recipe and bring it to the venue.
Prema B. Meti, winner of this round, impressed the judges with her laddu, chakli, kanchi kayi, manglore bajji fry, and a whopping amount of 10 varieties. The first runner-up Gayatri A. Palankar made impressive dishes like mutton curry, chicken sukka, neer dosa, mutton chops, and mutton biryani. The second runner-up Sunita Eshwarsa Merwade made pulao, chicken dry, four types fish, jeera rice, kheema, and raita.
Celebrity chefs Oggarane Dabbi Murali and Suchitra Murali Subha Rajashekar; Vijayakumar Dundsi, Gold Winner distributor; Manoj, RKG Partner, Butterfly; Mazar Hussian, Area Sales Manager; Raja Sekhar, Sales officer from Bambino, and Basawaraj, Area in charge from Everest felicitated the winners.
The grand finale in Bengaluru will be held on September 16. Celebrity chefs Oggarane Dabbi Murali and Suchitra Muralidhar will judge the dishes prepared by the contestants and announce the winners. The winner will get a prize of ₹1 lakh. The second prize will be ₹60,000 and the third prize ₹40,000.
Our State Our Taste is presented by Gold Winner, co-presented by RKG, powered by Butterfly, in association with Aashirvaad, Parrys Sugar & Everest. The vermicelli partner is Bambino and the television partner is Siri Kannada.