English Entertainment
Living Foodz raises a Toast to India’s finest restaurants, night
MUMBAI: India’s premium lifestyle channel, Living Foodz organized the second edition of Epicurean Guild Awards at an evening which saluted the game changers in India’s fine-dining, nightlife and lifestyle entertainment space. Held on March 22 at Sahara Star, Mumbai, the event was curated by Chef Manu Chandra. Living Foodz Epicurean Guild Awards paid ode to the country’s best fine-dining restaurants and lounges across 8 cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Goa.
Attended by India’s finest food mavens, influencers and eminent personalities such as Kunal Kapur, Maria Goretti, Amrita Raichand, Thomas Zacharias, Brinda Miller, Zeba Kohli, Kunal Vijayakar, Devita Saraf, Kelvin Cheung, Adarsh Munjal, Michael Swamy and Prahlad Kakar. The evening was a celebration of India’s evolving fine-dining and nightlife culture. Comedians Kunal Rao and Azeem Banatwalla had the audience in splits throughout the night.
The winners of this year’s Epicurean Guild Awards were:
JURY CHOICE AWARDS:
BEST CHINESE RESTAURANT: Yauatcha, Mumbai
BEST JAPANESE RESTAURANT: MEGU -The Leela Palace, Delhi
BEST MULTI ASIAN RESTAURANT: Gung the Palace, Delhi
BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT: Artusi Ristorante E-Bar, Delhi
BEST EUROPEAN RESTAURANT: Masque, Mumbai
BEST INDIAN RESTAURANT: Dum Pukht – ITC Maurya, Delhi
BEST NEW INDIAN RESTAURANT: Royal Vega – ITC Grand Chola, Chennai
BEST FREESTYLE RESTAURANT: The Bombay Canteen, Mumbai
BEST NEW RESTAURANT: POH, Mumbai
BEST NIGHTLIFE EXPERIENCE: KOKO Asian Gastropub, Mumbai
BEST INDIAN WINERY: KRSMA Estates
ICONIC RESTAURANT: Bukhara – ITC Maurya, Delhi
LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD: Madhur Jaffrey
NON-JURY AWARDS:
BEST FOOD ENTERTAINER: Kunal Kapur
BEST FOOD INSTAGRAMMER: Shivesh Bhatia
As the curator of the Epicurean Guild Awards Chef Manu Chandra said “The Epicurean Guild Awards are an attempt to redefine the narrative of fine-dining in India, which has undergone a significant transformation over the last few years. The awards champion India’s emerging stars who have put the country on the global culinary map. I have always rooted for the emergence of talent in this space and I am delighted to be a part of this unique property.”
While speaking about the evening Amit Nair said “At Living Foodz, we have always stood for creating new formats and intellectual properties.
The Epicurean Guild Awards in its second year have been a resounding success due to the meticulous approach and range of the jury involved. The award categories and winners reflect the diversity of India’s culinary landscape and I congratulate each one of them for setting the bar high. We are thrilled at the response from the consumer votes for the Best Food entertainer and Best Instagrammer of the year. The whopping 10k plus votes was a testament to the burgeoning interest in food related content both on TV and Digital, where we have maintained a sustained leadership.”
The awards were curated by Chef Manu Chandra along with an esteemed jury panel that consisted of an electric mix of the best chefs, influencers, and personalities from the food industry. It comprised of Chef Ranveer Brar, AD Singh, Karen Anand, Magandeep Singh, Bhaichand Patel, Ajay Chopra, Chef Rakhee Vaswani, Clinton Cerejo, Anoothi Vishal, Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal, Kalyan Karmakar, Mohit Anand, Nicole Madon, Nikhil Agarwal, Antoine Lewis, Anirban Blah, Osama Jalali, Ruma Singh, Gauri Devidayal, Ruth Dsouza Prabhu, Purva Mehra and Hemamalini Maiya. EY are the Process Advisors for the second edition of Living Foodz Epicurean Guild Awards 2018. The nomination process started by reviewing restaurants across the 8 cities, a dine out session followed by 2 jury deliberation rounds.
India Gate Brown Rice was the ‘Co-Powered By’ Sponsor and Volkswagen was the ‘Driven By’ Sponsor for the Epicurean Guild Awards 2018. Some of the strategic partnerships for the property included Radio One: Radio partner, Facebook- Social Media partner, Jean Claude Biguine – styling partner, The Hindu- Print Partner, FBAI- Blogging Partner, TGI.Co – Tea partner and Sahara Star- Hospitality partner.
UK: The aerial is losing its grip. As broadband becomes the default way Britons watch television, the UK is edging towards a decisive, and divisive, question: should Freeview be switched off by 2034? The issue, highlighted in reporting by The Guardian, has exposed deep fault lines over access, affordability and the future of public service broadcasting.
For nearly 25 years, Freeview has delivered free-to-air television from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to almost every corner of the country. Even now, it remains the UK’s largest TV platform, used in more than 16m homes and on around 10m main household sets. Yet the same broadcasters that built it are now pressing for its closure within eight years.
Their case rests on a structural shift in viewing. Smart TVs, superfast broadband and the Netflix-led streaming boom have pulled audiences online. Advertising economics have followed. By 2034, the number of homes using Freeview as their main TV set is forecast to fall from a peak of almost 12m in 2012 to fewer than 2m, making digital terrestrial television, or DTT, increasingly costly to sustain.
But critics say the rush to switch off risks abandoning those least able, or least willing, to move online.
“I don’t want to be choosing apps and making new accounts,” says Lynette, 80, from Kent. “It is time-consuming and irritating trying to work out where I want to be, to remember the sequence of clicks, with hieroglyphics instead of words. If I make a mistake I have to start again.”
Lynette is among nearly 100,000 people who have signed a “save Freeview” petition launched by campaign group Silver Voices. She fears the government is about to “take [Freeview] away from me and others who either don’t like, can’t afford, or can’t use online versions”.
Official figures underline the fault lines. A report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport estimates that by 2035, 1.8m homes will still depend on Freeview. Ofcom’s analysis shows those households are more likely to be disabled, older, living alone, female, and based in the north of England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Freeview is owned by the public service broadcasters through Everyone TV, which also operates Freesat and the newer streaming platform Freely. After two years of review, DCMS is expected to set out its position soon, drawing on three options proposed by Ofcom: a costly upgrade of Freeview’s ageing technology; maintaining a bare-bones service with only core PSB channels; or a full switch-off during the 2030s.
The broadcasters have rallied behind the third option. They argue that 2034 is the logical cut-off, when transmission contracts with network operator Arqiva expire. By then, they say, the cost of broadcasting to a dwindling audience will far outweigh the returns from TV advertising.
Ofcom agrees a crunch point is approaching. In July, the regulator warned of a “tipping point” within the next few years, after which it will no longer be commercially viable for broadcasters to carry the costs of DTT.
Others see risks beyond economics. Questions remain over whether internet TV can reliably deliver emergency broadcasts, such as the daily Covid updates, in the way that universally available DTT can. The UK radio industry has also warned that an internet-only future for TV could push up distribution costs and force some radio stations off air if PSBs no longer share Arqiva’s mast network.
“It is a political hot potato,” says Dennis Reed, founder of Silver Voices, who says he has “dissociated” his organisation from the government’s stakeholder forum, which he believes is “heavily biased” towards streaming.
The Future TV Taskforce, representing the PSBs, counters that moving online could “close the digital divide once and for all”. “We want to be able to plan to ensure that no one is left behind,” a spokesperson says, adding that rising DTT costs could otherwise mean cuts to programme budgets.
The numbers show the scale of the challenge. Of the 1.8m Freeview-dependent homes projected for 2035, around 1.1m are expected to have broadband but not use it for TV. The remaining 700,000 are forecast to lack a broadband connection altogether.
Veterans of the analogue switch-off, completed in 2012 after 76 years, recall similar fears of “TV blackout chaos”. Around 6 per cent of households were labelled “digital refuseniks”, yet a targeted help scheme and a national campaign, fronted by a robot called Digit Al voiced by Matt Lucas, delivered a largely smooth transition.
This time, the BBC is less keen to foot the bill. Tim Davie, the outgoing director general, has said the corporation should not fund a comparable support programme for a Freeview switch-off.
Research for Sky by Oliver & Ohlbaum suggests that with early awareness campaigns and digital inclusion measures, only about 330,000 households would ultimately need hands-on help ahead of a 2034 shutdown.
Meanwhile, viewing habits continue to fragment. Audience body Barb says 7 per cent of UK households no longer own a TV set, choosing to watch on other devices. In December, YouTube overtook the BBC’s combined channels in total UK viewing across TVs, smartphones and tablets, albeit measured at a minimum of three minutes.
That shift may accelerate. YouTube has recently blocked Barb and its partner Kantar from accessing viewing session data, limiting transparency just as online platforms consolidate power.
“When the government chose British Satellite Broadcasting as the ‘winner’ in satellite TV it was Rupert Murdoch’s Sky instead that came out on top,” says a senior TV executive quoted by The Guardian. “There already is such an outsider ready to be the winner in the transition to internet TV; it is YouTube.”
Freeview’s future now hangs on a familiar British dilemma: modernise fast and risk exclusion, or protect universality and pay the price. Either way, the aerial’s days as king of the living room look numbered.
