Worldwide eco-gastronomic movement Slow Food is quietly seducing Mumbai with its ideas of leisurely dining and local shopping. Kasmin Fernandes finds out why this anti fast food movement can do you nothing but good

Adrienne T hands you fresh basil leaves, straight from the plant, at the herb garden she is growing on the terrace of co-working space The Bombay Hub in Bandra. They are more aromatic than any basil you'll buy from a packet. Bite into the leaves, and you've also discovered they're much more delicious. The 23 year-old wants the rest of Mumbai to discover the joys of eating food you've grown yourself.



Her new social initiative Fresh and Local will raise awareness about community gardening and edible landscaping. "I would love to see people grow food on terraces and balconies. It takes far less space than you'd think," says the Slow Food advocate.

Adrienne is part of a languid subculture of people who are buying local, relishing every bite, and avoiding fast food like the plague.

Seen from afar, the Slow Food movement is an unlikely mash-up of people with widely differing
viewpoints, from dreadlocked environmentalists to agrarian socialist farmers and celebrity chefs. There is more to it than meets the eye, though.

Back to tradition
It has taken years for the movement to officially take shape in India, and Mumbai, although millions of people in our country have been quietly and unknowingly living its essence.

"Slow Food took root in Italy, and then spread the world over, to counteract the disappearance of local food traditions and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world. So, India has a long tradition of Slow Food, which we are slowly forgetting, especially in cities," says Lata Sharma, director, Navdanya and Slow Food convivium leader for Mumbai.

The Delhi-based NGO is promoting the movement closer home in alliance with the international non-profit organisation Slow Food (.com), founded by Carlo Petrini.

How it started
Slow Food began in 1986 when Petrini, a journalist, staged a successful protest against plans to build a McDonald's on the Spanish Steps of Rome. Petrini and his colleagues continued to meet to define the threats of fast food, which ultimately led them to a much broader discussion on the dangers of globalisation.

Petrini preached that one of the most obvious is the threat to culture, and at the heart of most cultures is food. It's currently trying to shed its image as a pleasure-based club for people who can afford to linger for hours at the dining table. Slow Food organises fairs, markets and events like Salone del Gusto, Slow Fish, Aux Origine du Go ufffdt and A Taste of Slow, locally and internationally, to showcase products of excellent gastronomic quality and to offer discerning consumers the opportunity to meet producers.

Terra Madre
In recognition that Slow Food had become top-heavy with consumers, the movement in 2004 launched the Terra Madre network (literally, Mother Earth) to bring small farmers and food producers onboard, and help them collaborate on improving their own artisan food networks. "Every two years, the movement comes together in Turin, Italy, for the Terra Madre gathering," says eco-nutritionist Kavita Mukhi, who's just back from this year's gathering.

Mukhi, and 20 other Indians, attended a series of workshops and discussions, looking at the challenges of food production and distribution; and the Salone del Gusto, a major exhibition of foods made according to the Slow Food principles.

There, 6,400 farmers, fishermen, cooks, food activists, teachers and students from 161 countries were engaged in three days of intense dialogue.

"Although buying local and cooking traditional has been a custom out here, it's losing ground to technology and fads, mostly among the urban young. Reviving that interest is the real challenge here," says Mukhi. She's doing her bit through her natural food label, Conscious Food, and the weekly Farmers' Market in Mumbai, which supports small farmers practising organic farming.

Slow on the uptake
While celebrity chefs around the world hold special Slow Food events, restaurants out here have been slow (pun unintended) to catch up with the movement. "Udipi restaurants and Indian restaurants like Soam and Indian Harvest are doing a great job of keeping up the desi culinary tradition. Italian gelato chain Amore too advocates Slow Food in a big way. They rarely import ingredients, use local ingredients creatively, localise flavours (Gulkand Cashew, for instance) and introduced an organic gelato flavour last December," says gastronomic writer and consultant Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal.

The Slow Food fan has launched Masala Trails culinary tours that combine history, culture and the foods of India, to take you through local households and traditional styles of cooking to the more elaborate royal experiences and recipes.

As Petrini said in an online interview, "Old ideas that still work can be maintained, as preferable to revolution, where the good is sometimes tossed out with the bad."

Number crunching

Slow food worldwide
A network of 100,000 members in 153 countries -- grouped in 1,300 local chapters called convivial -- develops activities, projects and events at a local, regional and global level. These currently include:
>>More than 5,000 Slow Food initiatives each year.
>>10,000 small producers involved in 314 Presidia projects.
>>903 products at risk of extinction promoted through the Ark of Taste catalogue.
>>1,300 food education activities and 350 school gardens in 100 countries.
>>Terra Madre network activities which involve 2,000 food communities, 1,000 cooks, 500 academics and 1,000 young activists.

The handbook: Your guide to joining the movement
1. Join a Slow Food group: The Mumbai convivium (local Slow Food group) run by Navdanya currently has 20 enlisted members. Of course, you don't have to join to be a part of the Slow Food movement -- it is just a chance to share ideas and to participate in events together.
Contact: Lata Sharma, convivium leader for Mumbai.
Email: latasharma22@yahoo.com
Call: 9920418027
Visit: www.navdanya.org