India, March 17 -- We finished the Culinary Culture weekend in Bangalore yesterday and I should straight away declare an interest. Along with my friend Sameer Sain, I founded Culinary Culture. But this article is not going to be about wonderful chaps Sameer and I are, you so can rest easy!

Instead, I am going to write about things I learned this weekend.

1. The Hindustan Times did the first major honest restaurant awards in Indian history. We called them the Crystals. Some of the awards were voted for by the readers of HT City and some were an entirely subjective selection based on my reviews.

2. We got sponsors, of course, but it did not even occur to us to sell the awards. Little did we know what a racket the awards business would be...