Disclaimer: This post is going to make your mouth really watery. There will be lots of attractive images of food items.😍 If you are ready to eat with eyes, go ahead and read this article. 😋
Today we had a mega Pot Luck team event in my office. Almost more than 50 members of the team participated in the event. It will be good to give a heads up first on where I work, before getting into the details. I'm working in ADP India Pvt Limited, Chennai, India. We have been doing associate engagement initiatives in our Services team making all the associates from the department participate. The entire associates on the services side of the office were split into 4 different teams. We have also been conducting other team competitions for the past few months. I'm one of the proud volunteers of this event organizing squad. As part of this initiative, we organized a food event today.
Every team was asked to bring homemade dishes and exhibit it. The rule was very simple. Tasty food with good presentation theme will win the prize. The members of the team were so competitive and they were able to think of different ideas and way to present the dishes to the judges. Each team had both vegetarian and non-vegetarian food items. The food items were very good in both look and taste. The team members took lots of efforts to decorate their food items to make it look tasty. You will see it by yourselves in the images shared in this post. I will go by each and every team with some colorful images.
Team A - Magic Minds
This team was the first team to showcase their cooking and serving talents. Thought it was initially a bit difficult for the team to get the food items heated up, the team finally managed to decorate their allocated table with the items brought by the team members. The team scored well in hospitality. Their theme was to provide a good feel of a South Indian wedding meal. I'm not going to go into the details of the food they served. Some of the highlights of their efforts were:
- They used a banana leaf to serve food to the judges
- Judges were made to sit and have their meal
- A sweet pan (Beeda) was given to the judges after the meal
- When the judges completed judging, a "Thank You" bag was also given to them.
This was a typical south Indian wedding style of hospitality. They also initially planned to have a complete wedding theme but it didn't work out. It was really interesting to see the way they explained their food.
Team B - Wakanda United
This team was named after the kingdom of Black Panther from the movie. The team's presentation was really amazing. The different names they gave for the dishes were very different. Judges moved from Team A to Team B to taste their food items. The team had all their food items given a Marvel themed names to make it more interesting for the viewers. The food items were a combination of both veg and non-veg. Some of the highlights of their efforts were:
- Every single item was marvel themed.
- The presentation was in a different level.
- It was a great attraction for the eyes.
- There are lots of varieties and each assigned to one Marvel character.
- They had a well-designed menu card with all the available items.
Team C
This team was the most competitive team for all the other teams. The way they explained their food items was really amazing. The representative of their team took the judges on a tour to each and every dish explaining all specific details. The judges were very happy after tasting all the food items. Some of the highlights from their efforts were:
- They had different varieties of unusual food items.
- The team's hard effort on each dish was clearly evident.
- They had lots of dessert varieties kept for display.
- All the food items were very rich in taste and were not so easy to prepare.
Team D
This team had the food items beautifully decorated with one banana leaf. The judges were explained about each and every item by one of the team members. The dish items were kept in big vessels with a nameplate and a few samples of each item were displayed in and around the banana leaf in a small bowl. The presentation was really attractive. The team presented about 18 different food items starting from the starters to deserts. Some of the highlights from their efforts were:
- All food items displayed in a Banana leaf.
- Natural and all healthy ingredients were used to prepare the food items.
- Some food items were specifically recognized as good one by the Judges.
Judging
Judging was the most difficult part of the entire event. There were 3 judges brought to the event who were not part of the 4 teams. The judges were from other departments as well. The first feedback received from the judges was that all the dishes were a great hit and it was very difficult for them to choose the winning team. It took lots of time for them to discuss and announce the winners. As they had to taste each and every food, they found it difficult to eat more quantity of their desired food. Winners of the event were announced towards the end of the day via an email communication.
- First Position - Team C
- Second Position - Team A
- Third Position - Team B and Team D
Judges had various criteria while selecting the winners. As mentioned earlier it was quite challenging for the judges to select the winning teams. The food taste was taken as the major winning criteria. Some special food items also received extra points from the Judges.
After Event
After the judging was done, all the team members shared the food items they brought and had a wonderful time tasting most of the items. There were some concerns from few associates saying that they were unable to eat few food items even though they were good. This was due to space constraints in their stomach. Everyone wanted to have an extra stomach today just to taste all the food items that were brought. Most of the food items reached empty vessel state as soon as they were opened and made available for everyone to taste.
Associates from other departments were also invited to taste the food items. Apart from the fact that it was a competition, all the team members were able to share their experiences and secret ingredient they used to prepare their tasty food. This collaborative task not only increased the team efforts for winning the competition but it also helped people feel like a family sharing cooking ideas with each other. Overall it was an amazing day!!
Bottom Note:
Image Source: All the images were taken by me using my mobile camera.
Image Restrictions: As the event happened in my office, I'm not authorized to share the images of real people who participated in the events. That's why I have just shared the images of only the food items.
Hope you had an interesting read. Share your views on this topic in the comments section. Meet you again in another article.
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