Indian Culinary Forum succeeds in its efforts with a Padma Shri Awards to chef Imtiaz Qureshi for popularising Indian food

Padma Shri has been awarded to Chef Imtiaz Qureshi, the legendary Indian chef, who is the Grand Master Chef of ITC Hotels, for his contributions in the culinary arts. The award was bestowed to him on January 26th 2016. It is for the first
time that a professional chef has been recognised with Padma awards by the country. Indian Culinary Forum, for
the past eight years has been consistently striving to get culinary arts to be recognised by the government. The
achievement by Chef Imtiaz Qureshi, is a successful result of the efforts put by Indian Culinary Forum under the
leadership of chef Davinder Kumar, president, ICF and veteran hotelier Anil Bhandari.
Responding to the announcement,Bhandari said, “Our efforts have paid results at the end. We have consistently been pursuing it with successive governments and ministers for eight years. It is a good beginning, and I’m really happy that a great chef
has been recognised by the country.” Adding to this, chef Davinder Kumar said, “On behalf of the entire ICF team, I would like to congratulate chef Qureshi for the award. I’m thankful to the government for considering culinary art as an most important discipline in India. Padma Shri award for such a great chef for his contribution to the culinary industry, is the result of the efforts of ICF.”
Indian Culinary Forum has always functioned as an exclusive non-profitmaking organization, Dedicated solely to the advancement of the culinary art of India. The Forum’s objective is to act as a link, platform, useful and necessary instrument for the national community of chefs. The achievement of the first national award for a profession
chef, is a step forward to mark the importance of culinary arts as a profession.