Parul University organised, Vadodara Food Festival. 5 celebrity chefs, a MasterChef winner live class, 40 Student- Run Restaurant Operations.

A well-established MasterChef Mom winner, who was born in Chennai, is now a Gurugram-based food content creator with a blog and YouTube channel. She talked about documenting the traditional recipes; otherwise, they will get lost. She also mentioned how food has a great connection with festivals and celebrations, and hence, the traditional recipes play a huge role. Further, she added that any Indian thali can compete with the Western and imported wellness trends.

The session brought one of the amazing chefs from India. Chef Ashish Bhasin has 25+ years of experience in the hospitality sector. Worked as an executive chef at The Leela Ambience, Gurugram. Before that, he worked as a trainee at Taj Group, The Oberoi Group, and The Leela Group. In 2018, he was among the top 5 hotel chefs in India. He now opened a restaurant, The Threesixty Degree, at Oberoi in Delhi. He also cooked for the president of India and founded CB Hospitality. He didn’t just share his knowledge about food, and he also mentioned AI and innovations in the kitchen, where he felt that it can lead to more job creation.

The MasterChef India winner of Season 7, from Assam, found her interest in cooking. An engineer turned chef through self-learning and practice makes him stand out. He said that through patience and perseverance, you can achieve your best dish. He also mentioned Northeastern Indian Cuisine and conducted a live cooking workshop where he prepared a five-layer chocolate trifle to show how professional hotel-like quality desserts can be made without a professional kitchen setup. Students learned this live and got a chance to taste it.

25 years in the culinary profession. Creator of Indus, a restaurant built around Indus Valley cuisine. Restaurants in Khan Market (Delhi) and Alibag. Chef at the widely reported Jamnagar wedding. Author of Stay With Indus: Culinary Journey of a Chef. During his session at VFF,  he talked about the role of storytelling in food, using social media responsibly to promote food knowledge and good foods at the session. He added how Ayurvedic flavours are important and why formally trained chefs matter.

50 years in professional kitchens. IHM Pusa Delhi graduate. President of the Indian Federation of Culinary Associations. He told the room that no single book exists on Indian food written from an Indian perspective the way French and Italian culinary texts exist. He challenged students to write that book. He called Ayurveda a blessing that Indians do not understand. His closing advice: be a master of one thing, one cuisine, one dish.

Flavors bring the real magic; learn the art at Faculty of Hotel Management at Parul University.

This food festival not only had celebrity chef-led sessions, but it also had 40 ventures led by students at the PID ground of Parul University. Apart from hotel management, students from different faculties also participated. B.Tech, BHMS, Pharmacy, etc. students participated in deciding the menus, inventory management, finances, price handling, customer handling, and other operations. The operations were not just academic learning; they were more of a practical, real-life experience that involved real costs, real revenue, real customer queues, and real decision-making under pressure.

The cuisines were not only restricted to India. It went beyond with Mexican tacos, burritos, Korean dim sum, Japanese teppanyaki, Indo-Chinese, and desserts. Participants, visitors, and the audience, along with guests, witnessed and tasted Hyderabadi biryani, Lucknowi rabdi, South Indian punugulu, Gujarati dhokla, Bihar and Rajasthan specialties, along with Maharashtrian vada pav and other Northeast dishes.

Students who ran these ventures learned menu planning, pricing strategy, inventory management, customer service under pressure, team coordination, marketing and branding, crisis management during rush hours, and quality control. Two B.Tech students from PIT ran a chaat venture inspired by a PIERC entrepreneurship session, directly connecting the university’s startup incubation ecosystem to on-ground food operations.

The Vadodara Food Festival operates as a compressed professional experience for students. In the expert sessions, students interact directly with chefs who have cooked for the President of India, won national cooking competitions, authored cookbooks, and run restaurants across Delhi, Gurugram, and Alibag. In the food ground, students operate their own ventures and face the same challenges that restaurant owners face daily: managing supply, serving quality food under time pressure, handling customer expectations, and making financial decisions in real time. The combination of expert knowledge transfer and hands-on operational experience is what makes this festival a core component of culinary education at Parul University.