Healthy dining: Organic restaurant

Apna Dhaba Vadodara

Sumptuous food, pleasant ambience and quick service. This is what one would normally associate with the publicity of a restaurant. So what does one think of the following publicity brochure: "Dangerous chemicals have trespassed the basic fabric of our life. It has started showing up in the breast milk of lactating mothers...In Padre village in Kasragod district of Kerala, children are being born deformed, mentally challenged, women and men are dying of cancer due to two decades of indiscriminate aerial spraying of Endosulphan..." This is what the advertisement of a new organic dhaba in Vadodara, Gujarat, reads like.

Apna Dhaba is a venture of a group of former chemical factory workers. "It forms part of an ongoing search for livelihood options for chemical factory workers who have been rendered jobless due to their agitation against the management," the ad says.Though it is described as a dhaba, the food does not come cheap. Transportation of organic produce from faraway villages makes procurement of organic produce difficult and expensive.

The vegetables, dals, rice and spices are grown by farmers who do not use synthetic fertilisers, hybrid seeds and pesticides. So next time you are in Vadodara, you know where to head for if you want a taste of chemical-free food.