Starter Kit. Idea 73 of 500. Cluster 4
Royal feast dinners recreating historical menus
The mechanism, from the book
An app that tells people what is happening tonight converts a day visit into a 2-night stay.
The first step
Research one historical menu from a published source you can cite, and cook a trial dinner for eight paying friends. Photograph it, write a short menu card with the history of each dish, and offer the dinner to a heritage hotel as a weekly event. A hotel agreeing to host it, or tickets sold, is the proof.
- Who pays first
- Heritage hotels that want a signature evening for guests, and visitors who will pay for a meal with a story.
- What leaves today
- A hotel buffet could be served anywhere; a historical feast sells the island's own history at the table, and only here.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what hygiene standard catering for large dinners needs.
- Department of Cultural Affairs. Ask whether historians have recorded what was eaten at the royal courts.
Check before you spend
That the historical menu is honest about what is known and what is invented, and that the kitchen can serve large groups safely.
Find out these three numbers
- What will visitors pay for a royal feast dinner?
- What does one dinner cost per guest to cook and serve?
- How many guests make a feast worth putting on?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.