The Ōle Project is a Karnataka-based initiative working to document and preserve the state’s diverse and often underrepresented food cultures. Born out of a lack of formal food archives, the project explores cuisine through the lenses of geography, community, and history, while challenging mainstream narratives that reduce Karnataka food to a few popular dishes. Through research, oral documentation, and seasonal supper clubs like Ushna, Ōle Project introduces audiences to hyper-local ingredients, forgotten recipes, and the cultural wisdom embedded in everyday cooking.
The Ōle Project was born out of a striking absence. In 2021, while working alongside the Archaeological Survey of India in Mysore, its founders, Anusha and Sowjanya, encountered a detailed effort to catalogue the region’s tangible and intangible heritage, fairs, rituals, traditions, but found that food, one of the most intimate expressions of culture, was missing. This lead to a deeper investigation into archives and research institutions, revealing a larger systemic gap: Karnataka’s food culture had never been formally or comprehensively documented.
What began as curiosity evolved into a long-term archival and research initiative. Ōle (which means cooking hearth in Kannada) Project positions food as living heritage, shaped by land, labour, caste, community, and time. Their work maps Karnataka’s agroclimatic diversity, from coastal plains and the Western Ghats to plateau regions, studying what each landscape can grow and how that directly informs local cuisines. This ecological understanding is layered with a focus on indigenous produce and contemporary agricultural realities, such as district-level economies and shifting crop patterns.
The founders observed that what is popularly understood as “Karnataka cuisine” is often a narrow slice, largely defined by commercially scalable, visible food cultures such as Udupi cuisine or certain dominant community traditions. In contrast, many everyday foods, like handmade kadboos (a type of idli prepared in a container made of woven jackfruit leaves), remain absent from public imagination precisely because they are labour-intensive, hyper-local, and not easily reproduced in commercial kitchens. This creates a distorted narrative where what is visible becomes synonymous with what exists.
”So that is where Ōle Project takes pride in the work that we do. When we travel across, we try to meet with people from different communities who represent different types of cuisines, not just what already exists in the mainstream," says Anusha. The project actively aims to expand the definition of Karnataka cuisine to include its many “mini cuisines”.
Their approach to documentation is also not unilateral. Recipes are not standardised into a single 'authentic' version; instead, each one is treated as a personal fingerprint. A dish is recorded alongside the identity of the person making it, their region, and their influences. This preserves not just the method, but the story behind it, recognising that food knowledge in India is largely oral, passed down through generations of home cooks.
Ōle Project situates itself within a growing 'slow food' and revival movement in India, alongside home chefs, small-scale archivists, and collectives working to preserve regional food cultures. They've also started their own supper club to educate people about the different cuisines in Karnataka through seasonal eating menus.
'Ushna' is the summer chapter of the Ōle Project’s evolving supper club series, designed as both a culinary and educational experience. Built around the idea of seasonal eating, Ushna explores how Karnataka’s regions respond to the heat, what grows during summer, how ingredients are harvested, and the ingenious preservation techniques used to extend their life across the year.Through curated menus and storytelling-led meal services, the experience introduces diners, especially those unfamiliar with the cuisine, to lesser-known dishes and practices, without altering their original recipes or flavours.
The project is also building a digital archival platform where individuals can document family recipes with appropriate attribution, preserving them for future generations while also creating avenues for recognition and economic value. The aim is to ensure that the voices of those who cook daily meals are heard, credited, and remembered.
At its heart, Ōle Project is an act of cultural reclamation. It challenges who gets to define cuisine, expands what is considered worthy of preservation, and insists that Karnataka’s food identity is not singular or static, but a complex, evolving tapestry. By documenting what is at risk of disappearing, it ensures that future generations don’t just inherit a simplified version of their cuisine, but rather its full, nuanced, and deeply rooted reality.
Follow the Ōle Project here.
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