At Slurp Studio, these chefs put food in the spotlight as they host team-building exercises for corporates

An invitation to cook a meal and then eat it while being treated to interesting titbits of Indian food history and complimented for your vegetable chopping skills is almost like a dream come true.

While the pandemic had stopped all plans of travelling for stories, this invitation came from a place not far from the YourStory office in Bengaluru in what I now call a “food intervention”.

For, this was not just a juicy story about a food studio, but one where my self-professed cooking skills, I promised myself, would be put to some good use. I would also learn something different from my daily cooking routine and engage in some food-related banter with two chefs-cum-entrepreneurs.

Chefs Faseeulla Saifulla and Sarabjeet Singh are the Founders of Slurp Studio, a food studio that offers personal and team-building experiences centred around food. They aim to make people enjoy food and fall in love with its history through various food-based activities.

The chefs dedicated an entire afternoon towards helping me whip up a three-course Italian meal from scratch. On the menu: Cream of Mushroom Soup, Handcrafted Spinach & Ricotta Ravioli, and Molten Chocolate Lava Cake.

Food and conversation

Sporting a Slurp Studio apron, I got down to business by chopping the mushrooms for the soup. While the chefs complimented my agility, I had got the technique all wrong. And while I began to learn to chop the right way, I started the conversation to where it all began.

Faseeulla and Sarabjeet are hotel management graduates from Christ University and hit it off as friends from day one. Faseeulla developed a love for cooking from the family’s kitchen in Bengaluru, which cooked scrumptious kebabs and biriyanis on woodfires with traditional implements. Hotel management seemed to be the natural choice after school.

Destiny, however, had other plans.

A Punjabi raised in Bengaluru, Sarabjeet admits that while he made chaats at home, he took up hotel management only because he was “not a very bright student”. He grew to love cooking and food.

Both went their separate ways after they completed their course in 2006 but kept in touch. Sarabjeet worked with the Taj Westend in Bengaluru and at Hyatt Regency in Miami. Faseeulla worked at Lalit Ashok and later opened a restaurant called Orange Peel in the city. He also took breaks where he travelled to different places to learn the connections between culture and food – from top chefs to thelawalas and bakery owners – food that spoke of a rich heritage but was undocumented.

“In 2009, when I came back to India, I met Faseeulla, and we discussed consulting together. We did that for a year-and-a-half, helping people open restaurants. In 2010, we talked to the Head of Department at Christ University about taking a few classes on barbecue cooking and its process,” recalls Sarabjeet.

That culminated into the BBQ Story, where the chefs would hold workshops for small groups of people and teach them to cook an entire menu - with them using just charcoal.

“We started getting enquiries from different parts of the city, and people loved it. The message was you could cook out of nowhere without fancy equipment or ingredients,” Faseeulla says.

Team building through food

When they got to know from Christ University that IBM was looking for a food-based team-building activity, they warmed up to an idea that would lay the foundation for Slurp Studio.

As the mushrooms were sauteed in butter and later blended with the addition of cream, we got to work on the Handcrafted Spinach and Ricotta Ravioli. Blanching the spinach and then crafting the ravioli as experts chefs guided made it seem not so challenging. task Little tips like using a fork to make impressions on the stuffed ravioli and dropping them into boiling water for just a couple of minutes ensured soft ravioli with the shell intact.

They stumbled upon the venue for Slurp Studio, in the heart of Bengaluru’s Indira Nagar, by chance while looking for another spot in the same area. Naturally lit, this large studio has several work tables for teams and lots of space to move around, giving it the air of a spacious outdoor kitchen. The entrance is lined with pots where the chefs grow herbs like rosemary, oregano, coriander and, others.

Over the past seven years, Slurp Studio has seen many companies sign up for team-building cooking exercises over the last seven years. These include Dell, Flipkart, Amazon, IBM, LinkedIn, Volvo, Ikea, Deloitte, HP, and others. The chefs have also worked with students from Christ University, University of Iowa, and 40K Australia. They have served over 10,000 customers so far.

The sessions are replete with cooking challenges, mystery basket challenges, and other activities where teams learn cooking in a spirit of fun and learning.

“All teams that have come here have understood a little more about food, a different direction of who we are, and what we are doing with food. And they've gone back with an experience that will inspire them to go back to their home kitchen and cook something on their own,” Sarabjeet says.

Faseeulla adds, “We engage them in conversations about food – what they like and dislike, and attempt to create memories as people in an organisation work together. It’s also about understanding the importance of nutrition, and cooking is not as scary as it may seem.”

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Innovating during the pandemic

During the lockdown, the chefs served COVID meals around the city on demand for those looking for nutritious meals.

The pandemic also took the studio, like many other companies, online. Now, the chefs take online classes for corporates, usually 90-minute sessions.

“It can be any dish from the ingredients available in your fridge, how to organise your meals, and how to prep for them. People can ask us any number of questions, and we are there to guide them,” Sarabjeet says.

They also talk of an experience where they tasted food made by more than 1,000 IBM employees and chose the best 10 people for a cook-off challenge.

Slurp Studio also hosts small private sessions for families and individuals, following all COVID protocols.

The soup and the ravioli were ready, and the chocolate cake was in the oven by this time. We had a lot of help, which made multitasking easier.

There’s another pet project that the chefs are involved in, one they promise to divulge in the next few months.

“We want to document food history and revolutionise Indian cooking for the world. We are researching a lot on Indian food, digging out traditional recipes and cooking techniques, and understanding more about the food diaspora in Indian cuisine,” Faseeulla says.

The end of the conversation also signalled lunch – we sat down to eat what I cooked (in part). The food was tasty, the conversation tastier. It was a food experience, like no other.

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