The Tourism Council of Bhutan (TCB) has lately been working on improving domestic tourism to restore the livelihood of those in the tourism sector. Since then, the number of people visiting Singye Dzong, a famous pilgrimage site in Lhuentse has been on the rise. To help equip restaurants and homestay owners in the locality with traditional culinary skills, Bhutan Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI) conducted a weeklong training program at Khoma in Lhuentse.
The weeklong culinary training program, which concluded on Monday, saw 35 participants. During the training, participants were provided with hands-on training on how to prepare more than 40 Bhutanese cuisine. As part of the training program, they were also trained on the proper code of conduct. Participants shared the training will help them provide a rich variety of food for their customers during the peak season of tourism.
Tshering Yangki, a participant who only knew how to prepare about five to six varieties of Bhutanese food before says she can now cook over 40 food item after the training. “Henceforth, I will prepare and offer the various cuisine taught to me by my trainer to my guest,” she added.
Most of the participants are from homestays in Khoma Gewog and they are hopeful their businesses will improve thanks to the training program. This month alone, Khoma Gewog registered 240 local people who came for a pilgrimage to Singye Dzong. And most of them stayed at the homestays en route to the pilgrim sites.
“If any guests visit our place, we can prepare different Bhutanese cuisine like ema-datsi, shakam-datsi and shakam-gongdho. We have learnt how to cook different food items and it will help us in providing various cuisines to our guests. We see many tourists visiting Khoma Gewog,” said Ngudrup Dorji, a Participant.
“When we prepare kow (hides) item at home we have our own different ways of cooking the food. But during the training program, we were taught different cooking steps. The trainer taught us how to prepare food items using our own food ingredients like onion, pepper and garlic,” added Norbu, also a participant.
To encourage participants to fully engage themselves during the training program, a cooking competition was also held among them.
“So far participants have been preparing different cuisine at home but they did not get any sort of culinary training to prepare different food items. So the food items I am teaching them are neither copied from anywhere else nor it’s based on my assumption. Those cuisines, which I have taught them during the training program, are the ones that were there since our ancestor’s time,” said Gangkar Wangdue, the trainer.
According to BCCI, such training is expected to help promote domestic tourism in the eastern region.
“In the earlier days, prior to providing such training programs, there was only limited cuisine like ema-datsi. And according to our trainer, there are more than 160 Bhutanese cuisines in our country. So when both domestic and regional tourists come on tour to Lhuentse Dzongkhag, our participants will be able to prepare and provide almost 47 Bhutanese cuisines to them,” said Tenzin Wangchuk, from the BCCI.
A Similar training program was also conducted in Punakha recently.
Sonam Tshering
