Food, with no reservations
Their inspiration is Anthony Bourdain, say cousins Sid Mewara and Shashank Jayakumar. Their Youtube channel The Big Forkers was born, in fact, during a tour of Spain inspired by an episode of Parts Unknown, one of the late Bourdain’s popular TV shows about food, culture and travel.
While on the Bourdain-inspired tour with friends in 2019, Jayakumar discovered that his cousin Mewara was in Italy on business. The group decided to meet up with him in Valencia, and proceeded to go on a tour of “epic meals” along the Spanish coastline.
As they spent their time obsessing over meal choices and joking and riffing about dishes, one of the group suggested they film their experiences and share them on Youtube, and so The Big Forkers was born.
Working with The Producer, an unnamed helmeted entity who often directs the action in the videos, and a team that has now grown to 14, Mewara and Jayakumar have posted 28 videos shot in Mumbai and Goa since their first video a year ago.
They have also posted a 12-part series called Forking Around in the pandemic, which featured the two men cooking in their respective homes (Mewara in Goa and Jayakumar shuttling between Vadodara and Mumbai).
What sets their videos apart from the endless reels on social media is a genuine interest in culinary cultures, a love of food, and an irreverent sense of humour. Production quality is high too (possibly one reason the next set of episodes, shot in Karnataka, is set to appear on a streaming platform first), and conversations with chefs and eatery owners are candid, informed and appear impartial.
The formula has struck a chord. The Youtube channel has nearly 42,000 subscribers, with another 14,000 following the Instagram handle. Part of their ability to connect with the viewer, the duo believes, comes from the way they break the fourth wall, express delight or dismay over what they’ve just eaten, guffaw over production mishaps rather than try to cover them up and admit when they don’t know something and chat about new things they’ve learnt.
In Goa, for instance, the two men explored the lesser-known Luso cuisine, a Portugueseleaning hybrid of Porto-indian cuisine with echoes in other former Portuguese colonies such as Macau, Angola and Brazil. They also covered elements of the Goud Saraswat Brahmin (GSB) cuisine, including five very distinct kinds of poha.
“The idea is to do a grounded, real, relatable show, without fluff, gloss and glitter-drizzled packaging,” says Jayakumar, 35.
In keeping with what they learnt from and loved about Bourdain, no subject matter is taboo. “It’s sad but just the mention of beef triggers people in India now,” says Mewara, 44. “We don’t shy away from eating beef / buff in Mumbai while calling it Bombay. Likewise, we covered GSB cuisine in Goa. We knew certain folks would be taken aback by us covering food along the lines of caste, but it was a story we felt needed to be highlighted because it is part of the culinary tapestry.”