The dosa, often touted as India's pancake, has evolved from a regular, round-shaped breakfast item into a scrumptious dish of different forms and exciting combinations. Made using a batter of rice and lentils, the dosa has been subjected to extreme creativity―pizza dosas, oats dosas, schezwan dosas, to name a few. However, the current buzz in 'dosa-verse' is about the longest dosa ever made. In an attempt to break the previous record of 54-ft-8.69-inches-long dosa, a team of 60 chefs headed by chef Dr Vinod Kumar prepared a 100-ft-long dosa on January 11 at IIT Madras. On the same day, the dosa team entered into the Asia Book of Records for preparing the longest dosa of 82 feet using 37.5 kg of batter.
In November 2014, Hotel Daspalla in Hyderabad made a world record in preparing the longest dosa of 16.68 m (54 ft 8.69 in). This dosa record featured 29 chefs. Chef Kumar approached Saravana Bhavan Hotels with an idea to beat this dosa milestone and said that the management was excited to be a part of this.
“It did not take a long time to plan and prepare for this attempt. We took 10 days to plan the venue, needed materials and other arrangements,” says chef Kumar. The 105-feet-long dosa tawa is the hero of this achievement. The tawa was specially designed for this attempt in four to five days’ time. “Our biggest challenge was to lift the tawa which was four tonnes heavy. It required a great deal of manpower,” says chef Kumar.
Sixty chefs were selected from various branches of Saravana Bhavan in Chennai and Kanchipuram districts. To avoid a mess during the massive event, the chefs were divided into teams and were given training. Right from mixing the batter to pouring ghee, the chefs were assigned a task and divided into teams―batter-mixing team, batter-pulling team, ghee-pouring team, back-up team and front-end team.
Sixty chefs were divided into teams to achieve this feat | Facebook page of Asia Book of Records
“During training days, we had to find out who was best for mixing the batter, pulling it. So we had to divide them into teams. This way, they can concentrate on the given task”, says chef Kumar.
The team also prepared an 82- and 60-feet dosa apart from the 100-feet dosa. As they have applied for the priority evidence review of Guinness World Records, they are yet to send the preparations footage for review. “A group of us will decide which among these dosas will be sent for review. Once the footage is uploaded, we will get the result in a week”, says chef Kumar who is hoping to make another world record.
