Food in India ...Udipi Style !
Traveling in India, one gets to see all sort of food joints and restaurants, from the mighty Taj/ITC/Oberoi super exclusive and super pricey restaurants that serve up food that you would find in any top dining destination in the world (and a single meal could run into a couple of hundred dollars) to the millions of tiny places that dot cities and metropolis throughout the country and you can get yummy treats for less than a dollar. This blog post is about yummy under a dollar eats in the sunny state of Goa !
Our travels took us to Goa, a state on the western side of India and along with all the yummy sea-food one finds there, there is also the cheap and ever-present Udipi style restaurants all throughout Goa. Typically serving South Indian vegetarian food (though many have started becoming a one stop shop, South Indian, North Indian, Indian Chinese etc), these places promise vegetarian food that is cheap and served in a very hygenic environment.
Popular soft drink vendors offer these places free signs which serves as ads for the company and the shop owner gets a couple of lines at the bottom. Sort of a symbiotic relationship.
All Udipi resturants share some common themes which help them keep prices low (see next pic below)
- no frills open layout with spartan tables/chairs/benches which are easy to clean and maintain
- drinking glasses and water provided at the table itself which makes the servers more efficient (they only come to drop off the menu/drop off the food/pick up the bill)
- open service window which makes it easy for the servers to pick up food and the cooks to call out orders when ready (diner style)
This particular joint (Manjunath) was the cheapest I every saw among the ones I ate at ... at 65 Rs to the dollar, you could eat like a king for under a dollar and still have change left over. The other place, Sheetal (see pics below), which was my fav., ran to about 100 Rs. (about $1.50) for a very filling meal and lassi/bottled water !
The Onion Rava Dosa at New Sheetal is an amazingly crisp semolina pancake with cruncy onions and green chillies all baked in. The white coconut chutney and the orange sambhar make nice dipping sauces both cool and spicy. This Sheetal version was at par with the best dosa's I have eaten in India and New York !
The "Special" curd rice at New Sheetal is a mix of rice and curd mixed with lightly mustard seed fried onions, tomatoes, chillies and topped with fresh green coriander. When you step in for lunch after a day out and about in the heat, this is a very refreshing dish that cools one down. The crunchy raw onion on the side and yummy bit of lemon pickle were nice additions to the dish.
Total damage less than a hundred bucks for an amazing meal ! I loved this place so much and struck up a nice rapport with the owner and became a regular over the few weeks I was in this town - they even knew my special dish - the "special" curd rice !
At Manjunath (and at New Sheetal as well), even though new technologies like mobiles, Whatsapp have taken over in getting orders and dispatching food, the daily tallies and accounts are still maintained in the traditional red ledger - this ones has the goddess of wealth Laxmi on it.