Imphal, April 20 2009: The food stalls of Manipur Tourism Festival and Best of Asia Expo 2009 have become the place of delight for State foodies.

These stalls are the real crowd pullers in the festival which will wrap up tomorrow.

The stalls cater items ranging from largely acclaimed pad thai of Thailand to our own yerum bora, and well-known Indian kashmiri chaat to Kabui delightafutpas.

"I'm delighted that the organisers have brought some International tastes in this festival, it is quite occasional to have Thai foods in our own State", said Sumitra, a GP College student.

A team of three chefs are serving the visitors in the Thai food stall.

Head chef Peate said, "Manipur and Thailand are quite similar in food habits, and I'm satisfied with the type of response we are getting here".

The Thai team prepares only two dishes every day.

And one can have dishes from beef-topped nam tok to hot dry beef or pork curry panaeng.

For heavy breakfast and lunch, Peate's team offfers non-veg rice-noodle fried pad thai and fried rice-chicken khao pad gai.

"The smell is bit different, but the taste is incredible", said Ghanashyam, a visitor after having mouthful of hot panaeng.

And for those who want to try some oil-soaked and spicy Indian foods, Deli da Rasoi team from Guwahati prepares arrays of items of Birayanis to dosas and paw bhajis, and from chats to chops.

Gouranga Das of Deli da Rasoi said, "I come here for the festival with 12 of my subordinates.

And I'm satisfied with the number of customers we are getting in the festival".

A brisk business of Rs 15000 per evening is easy, Gouranga added with a smile.

It is his first experience in the Capital and would love to be here next time as well, Gouranga said.

Apart from all these delights, visitors enjoy their own indigenous items of singju-boras to afutpa-ataobas in the festival as well.

The eating joints run by the ladies of Keishamthong and Kakhulong Kabui in two different stalls have all the treats to the palate of State gourmets.

The menu is rather long, but one cannot skip mouth watering marin singju and oksa afutpa.

And a bottle or two of chilled Chakhao or laphoi atingba is highly suggestible to cool down one's spine in this scorching season.

For those who want to try more variety of atingbas, Tangkhul food stall is the right place.

The stall has passion fruit and amla varieties, apart from the rice variety.

The stall also caters pork, beef, chicken and marin curry, all in typical boiled big-piece Tangkhul style, which melt in the mouth like butter.

Even after having all the above, one cannot ignore yerum bora, khajing bora and fresh singju, all available in Mutum Asharani's Meitei food stall.

All her items are served hot and one has to stand a long queue to test her hand as Asharani said, "A daily sale of Rs 12000 is easy".

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