Hyderabad recognised as Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had designated Hyderabad as a Unesco Creative City of Gastronomy in 2019. It has recognised Hyderabad as City of Biryani, Kebabs, Haleem, Shikhampur and Chowki dinners.

The UNESCO on Wednesday announced that Hyderabad was the only city in the country to be recognised for its rich gastronomic culture and one of the only two cities selected from across the country in 2019 in the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN); the other being Mumbai in the film category.

The designation of Hyderabad in the creative cities' list brought the city's rich culinary heritage and tradition into focus dating back to pre-Islamic Kakatiya cuisines (12th century) that interacted with the Turkish cuisines in the 15th century, followed by Mughal influence in the 17th century. The focal representatives of the State Government, include the Mayor, the GHMC, the GHMC Commissioner, designated zonal commissioner, and various stakeholders of the culinary field as designated by the Department of Municipal Administration and Urban Development participated in a 'webinar on the UCCN' on Wednesday to present exemplary cases on the UCCN nomination process and application-making to encourage other aspirant cities from South Asia.

In the recognition of Hyderabad's long legacy of Gastronomy culture and its efforts as a UCCN City, they had requested to present the case of Hyderabad in the session on the nomination process, so that other invited cities from across South Asia can learn from the application experience of Hyderabad.

GHMC Zonal Commissioner Khairatabad and Main Executive from Hyderabad for the UCCN P Pravinya made two presentation in this regard, one on March 15 to the general meeting of the Cities Of Gastronomy from all across the world including Meridi and the second for the South Asian group of cities seeking assistance in developing their dossier for the nominations of 2021 like Amritsar, Bhopal, Colombo and Gwalior.

In the former, the City of Hyderabad's progress in the action plan of Hyderabad was presented along with areas where the city seeks collaboration from other Cities of Gastronomy. In the latter, the reason for application, the process followed by the team and the overall experience of achieving the objective of the network was discussed.