Vegetarian-only menu: No chicken at Vibrant Gujarat after bird flu scare

Nearly 6,000 foreign delegates, coming for the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, may end up having vegetarian meals as chicken has been removed from the menu of most hotels and restaurants in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar over an outbreak of bird flu.

Nearly 6,000 foreign delegates, coming for the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit, may end up having vegetarian meals as chicken has been removed from the menu of most hotels and restaurants in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar over an outbreak of bird flu.

Health department officials from Gujarat state wear protective suits enter the Asha Foundation, an animal and bird rescue shelter, for a cleanliness drive at Hathijan village, some 20km from Ahmedabad. (AFP Photo)

Adhering to Gandhian principles, the menu was already ‘vegetarian-only’ for the January 10 dinner at Mahatma Mandir — the venue of the four-day summit — where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will break bread with nearly 60 CEOs of international and national companies.

Now, trying out popular Indian non-vegetarian dishes at five- and four-star hotels has also been ruled out. These hotels will be hosting most of the state guests, including Presidents of Kenya and Rwanda, Prime Ministers of Portugal and Serbia, deputy PMs of Russia and Poland, nine Nobel laureates, and delegates from nearly 80 countries.

“We have stopped serving chicken and egg items since this week. We have explained to the foreign delegates who have already arrived about the bird flu situation,” said Annirudh Limay, executive chef of Courtyard Marriot. The five-star hotel has replaced chicken items with mutton and fish.

Though the options of mutton and fish are still there, the volume of non-vegetarian platters has gone down drastically as chicken delicacies dominate the non-vegetarian menus of most of the city hotels and other food joints. The hotels have, however, not received any notification in this regard from the government.

Some of the hotels have introduced special Japanese and Chinese menus for foreign delegates to replace dishes prepared with chicken. “As per Government of India’s guidelines, the state government is proactively taking all precautionary measures. It is a continuous process that goes throughout the year. (Before this) not a single case of bird flu was reported from Gujarat in the past 10 years,” said animal husbandry minister, Babu Bokhiriya.

The Gujarat government has awarded Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Palace hotel the contract to prepare lunch for the state guests and dinner for CEOs, both scheduled for January 10 at Mahatma Mandir. Taj chefs will supervise the preparation of all-vegetarian meals, said an official.