Gourmet Files
La maison de la prétention
VASUNDHARA CHAUHAN
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Joints with honest names usually have satisfying fare to offer…
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Photo: Shaju John
No pretensions: You know what to expect.
I warm to restaurants named Om’s Restaurant and Hotel. Or Kamath’s. Or Gulati. Or Bengal Sweet House, M. Tiffin Room, Raj Kumar Shudh Vaishnav Dhaba or Raj Kumar Military Hotel. Honest names, with nary a nod to wit or style, just, simply, the name of the owner or the main ingredient. Isn’t that wonderful? You know where you stand, what to expect. Of course there are exceptions, like Sagar or Saravana Bhavan, where the names don’t announce it but you know what you’ll get. And if you’re not familiar with these names, you shouldn’t be reading this.
Restaurant names are sometimes coded. “Military”, in the South, means meat is served. Vaishnav, anywhere, means strictly vegetarian. “Hindu” Hotel could mean either, depending on which part of the country it’s located in, but in any case, certainly no beef. Udupi needs no comment. And there are names that refine and expand directness: Enjoy Chicken Corner. Gopal Dosa and Thali Meals. Havmore. But how about Ek Boti Do Roti? I might argue that it should be Ek Roti, Do Boti, and I did. The manager’s contention was that everybody eats one piece of meat with two rotis. Regardless, the name is so unique it’s traffic-stopping.
Pompous pretensions
And then there are the other kinds of restaurant names. The most expensive probably hire a large advertising agency/marketing consultant who charges one zillion bucks to help choose a name. So you get a word that denotes nothing except that you, buster, are going to be paying for the advertising agency/marketing consultant. Anyway that doesn’t take away from this propensity to be pretentious. Which gives us menu entries in foreign languages simply because they think it’s more impressive.
But which is worse? The cauliflower masquerading as chou-fleur or this chapter heading in the menu of a local “Hotel cum Restaurant”: “By Flesh of Goat”? The line between unpretentious and crude is thin. This last, though, scores really high on both pretentious and crude.
And there are names that are so “basic” — or earthy, or ethnic — you just know it’s reverse snobbery. Pretend simplicity. Like an expensive, air conditioned restaurant called, cutely, The Dhaba. The Shack (or The Hut or whatever.) The Great Tikka Factory. All good, expensive restaurants, but in the matter of pretentious names... I rest my case.
A pretentious name, and then the logical next step, a pretentious interior and a menu in misspelt, ungrammatical French, will take some time to get past my prejudices. But if the food and service are good, most is forgiven. It’s just that a restaurant with a simple, honest-to-goodness name and a clear, lucid menu stands a better chance of speedy acceptance.
Like the canteen at Andhra Bhavan. It has no name, unless it does but the management has decided on a “need to know” policy and restrict the information to a small group of security-cleared friends.
Fast service
You walk in and see a deterringly large bunch of others who reached earlier waiting for tables. Within a minute or less they’re seated and so are you. Before you can clear your throat and spread a napkin on your lap (there are none), a large rectangular steel thali has been plonked on the scrubbed laminated table in front of you. Swiftly followed by a katori each of sambhar and rasam. The thali has six compartments. The largest already contains pulao and a narrow one on the side has a little katori of set dahi and one of dessert — usually a halwa. The best I’ve had of was of broken wheat, jaggery and little bits of chopped coconut. But dessert later. The vegetables are served out of one of those branched contraptions of four bowls. There’s always an unusual chutney, a dry vegetable, one with gravy, and tuvar dal with spinach. First the papad and then the poori man come round and try stopping him from giving you less than four pooris at a time. There are curries and “fries” of mutton, chicken and fish, but those are “extra”. When you’re done with pooris, start on the boiled rice. There’s an assortment of pickles — mango and gongura — podi and ghee in a plastic cruet set. Now that was a mere laundry list which doesn’t half tell the story.
The good part of this canteen is the service — speedy and good humoured. The bad part is the noise and heat. The best part is the food. The dahi is sweet without sugar — just perfectly set. The pulao is light, usually with some vegetables, and fragrant with cloves and cardamom. The fresh chutney is spicy, of something unexpected like aubergines or gourd skins. The vegetables! Always something new. They probably have weekly menus planned in advance and repeated, but if you don’t live there, the variety is always refreshing. Even the way of cooking is distinctly different from what I’m used to. The parwal, for instance, is tempered with chana dal, peanuts and dry red chillies — not the boring, predictable stuff I’m used to. And what is most reassuring is the predominantly Andhra clientele. So it’s not just the novelty of the cuisine that’s drawing us there. Over the years the place has become popular with local Dilli-walas, particularly students and journalists, but the high volume Telugu in the hall is proof, I suppose, of authenticity. The “mutton fry” is my favourite. Small cubes of boneless mutton fried to within an inch of being charred, steeped in the masalas... oily, spicy, chilli hot, with the odd curry patta floating about... I’ve tried replicating it at home, in vain.
But at 50 rupees a pop, why shouldn’t we eat out?
The author is a food writer based in Delhi. She is with the ASER Centre.
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