Authentic food cafes transform local cuisine

On a warm March afternoon, Plantina Mojae prepares a meal in the kitchen of her café in the village of Khueng in the Indian state of Meghalaya. She is wearing bright white and green Jane Kirshahwhich is the traditional checkered cloth worn by women from the Khasi community, the largest ethnic group in Meghalaya.

She makes plates full of snacks: packets of bright green banana leaves demon, a snack made from a mixture of local rice varieties, and pale yellow tablets for an unnamed snack made by Mugai herself, made with steamed cassava. It is a large amount of information about the foods indigenous to the Khasis, which include ancient grains, such as millet, and local varieties of rice, as well as a wide range of wild foods, including vegetables, fruits, berries, and roots.

Through the traditional cuisine that Mojai serves in her café, she promotes the consumption of neglected and underutilized species of edible plants found in and around her village. These forgotten plants are usually collected from the wild or harvested from rice fields where they grow as uncultivated vegetables (or “herbs”, in modern parlance).

Mojai – affectionately referred to as Kong Plantina, Kong Being a term respectful of older women in the Khasi language – sit down to share about her journey running her first out of six Mei-Ramew (or “Mother Earth” in local cafes in the Khasi language. These cafés connect food stall owners like Kong Plantina, small farmers, scientists, café patrons, and the larger community with the rich local agricultural biodiversity.

As a young girl, Kong Plantina learned traditional cooking from her grandmother – recipes that use wild greens, bitter tomatoes, dried or fermented fish and many other local ingredients, as well as traditional techniques, such as cooking in a bamboo tube. But when she started her food stall nearly 30 years ago, she cooked what she called Market Food: Dishes that customers want to eat, such as white rice, dal dishes, and potato dishes. The ingredients for these dishes were purchased from the market, with no original ingredients used.

According to a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, of the thousands of edible plant species known in the world, only 150 to 200 are actively cultivated for human consumption. Only 12 crops and five animal species make up 75% of the food consumed by humans. Rice, maize and wheat make up the vast majority of the vegetable crops consumed. Commercial production and global transportation of these crops has a huge carbon footprint. This over-reliance on a few foods also puts the diet at risk of diseases and disorders, such as those caused by COVID-19, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis. Initiatives such as Mei-Ramew Cafés that focus on indigenous agricultural biodiversity offer a form of climate resilience.

A mapping exercise conducted by the Northeast Slow Food and Agricultural Diversity Association, an organization working to advance food sovereignty in Meghalaya, documented 319 edible plants in and around Khweng Village. “When we started working in this area in 2012, we saw a lot of biodiversity,” says Janak Preet Singh, senior participant in Livelihoods Initiatives. “But we didn’t see it on people’s plates.”

So NESFAS has started programs to encourage the consumption of neglected and underutilized edible plants, including wild plants and uncultivated vegetables. When NESFAS introduced the Mei-Ramew Café concept to food stall owners, Singh said it was difficult to change most people’s mindsets, and get them to appreciate authentic ingredients and cuisine. “The food stalls were their livelihood, after all,” he says. There was a social stigma attached to wild plants, which were considered food for the poor, which increased the reluctance of food stall owners to serve traditional cuisine.

However, Kong Plantina realized the opportunity in Mi Ramio’s concept. In 2013, she completely revamped her menu and added forgotten ingredients and dishes she learned from her grandmother.

By sourcing ingredients from local farmers and foragers, she ensured that her fellow villagers also received a regular income. In addition to traditional cuisine, Kong Plantina is constantly innovating and even creating dishes that appeal to younger palates, such as popsicles with the traditional flavors of hibiscus and tamarind and tapioca flour cakes.

Wild edible plants, which have thrived over hundreds of years, are tougher than cultivated crops and tend to be more resistant to changes in climatic conditions. They are also rich in micronutrients and add to dietary diversity, helping to reduce malnutrition and improve food security. Using forage or locally grown ingredients without chemicals, the coffee shopés also maintains a very low carbon footprint.

Over the years, with her earnings from the Mei-Ramew Café, Kong Plantina has raised and educated her 10 children. Her cooking is so highly regarded that she is regularly invited to cook at large occasions, to feed thousands of people. She remembers the International Food Festival that took place in Meghalaya in 2015 and was attended by over 50,000 people. “The crowd kept coming for our traditional food,” she says. “And soon we had nothing left to serve.”

Kong Plantina has also trained many other chefs, including Diyal Muktiya. “I’m excited to share my knowledge,” Kong Plantina says.

Since 2019, Kong Dial, as its bookshop is known, has run its own Mei-Ramew Café just across the street from Kong Plantina Café. She fondly remembers one of her aunts telling her, “When you look out the window, what you see there should be on your plate.” In keeping with her aunt’s wise words, Kong Dial has a kitchen garden filled with aromatic vegetables and herbs that she uses in her teahouse.

Both owners of the cafe also try to grow several edible wild plants in their gardens in an attempt to domesticate them, including the chameleon. Houttuynia cordataalso known as fish mint, red ragweed Crassocephalum crepidioidesalso known as viroid, and eastern Himalayan begonia Begonia Roxburgh. The two cafés in Khoeng have become the heart of the 100-family village, the place where residents hang out until the late hours, exchanging stories and information about indigenous plants and foods.

Hendry Momen, owner of Mei-Ramew Café in the village of Darechikgre, about eight hours from Khweng, has been supporting his community throughout the COVID-19 lockdown. From April to June 2020, food establishments in India were asked to close, and supplies of basic staples such as bread were disrupted. Moomin quickly developed recipes for baking using tapioca flour and grains such as millet. He would bake the loaves at home and then deliver them to his customers.

For some urban youth, Mei-Ramew cafés have become a place to be seen and posted on social media. For others like Gerald Doya, a Khasi travel entrepreneur based in the state capital Shillong, coffee shops have a deeper significance. He remembers feeding with his aunts and uncles as a child in the fields and forests around his ancestral village of Mawkyrdep. “My generation has lost a lot of traditional knowledge about foraging forage and identifying plants for consumption and medicinal purposes,” Duia says. He himself was no longer able to identify the edible plants that he had known as a child. “This is why Mi Ramio Cafes are so important, to keep this knowledge alive.”