One more hotel is drawing in Mysoreans. Located on the road named after the poet Kalidasa, its walls pay a tribute to a great writer, R K Narayan and his classic, Malgudi days.
You feel lost in time when you observe the murals. The touch of Shankar Nag, Ananth Nag and the cast of yonder-show place you in nostalgia. Everything is hand painted, just like the old times. The food served on the ground floor does take you back to good old Mysore. Bisibelebath, Filter coffee, Dosa and Idli, with a dash of sambhar, as you go back to the days when life was simple, and the telegraph was still there.
The drawings on the first floor put you right in the middle of Malgudi. You join R K Laxman's "Common Man" in the streets of Malgudi, taking you through the lanes and by lanes of a non existent village, asking for directions which go nowhere.
You could spend an entire evening just admiring the walls, and not having a morsel pass through those smiling lips.
But that is not what the restaurant wants you to have. It means business. So you get an inexperienced staff wearing the same apron as the table cloth, and you get the idea of how the previous group on your table feasted, with stains on the napkins and towels. Thankfully, the dish is not leftovers. The second floor is for family and meals, and if you order the North Karnataka special, you have to take the stairs to the third floor. This odd reason, more of a nuisance, and the stairs which seemed to lead to the North Star, made us to opt for the second floor.
The starters were presented well with some creative vegetable carving and salivating spices on the Paneer and Spring roles. It was crisp and crackled to the T. The Kashmiri parotha with its fruits and stuffing was bang on the money. The curries were average, and did not have much to chomp on. And then we ordered Jola roti, which Malgudi prides itself.
Thankfully, Dad had eaten the best Jola rotis when he was a boy from the hands of an aunt who is a legendary cook in the family. I had friends from North Karnataka in college, and they just gave me Jola rotis by the kilo. Malguid gave us three, shaped like mini papads.
They had some weird powder on them, and loads of butter on top. Looks like they forgot that ghee is the key ingredient, and spicy hand ground chilli powder with spices, one of the secrets for the North Kannadigas abusive dialect, go in an authentic jola roti.
I struggled to finish this non-Malgudi, non-Karnataka dish while perched on an uncomfortable lounge sofa (this annoys me; hotels put this for fancy corners, but it puts us off and most of us never return, not to mention the dirt on it). The desert which said Malgudi special and Toasted ice-cream, existed only on paper. Well, some things are better left in the past.
Malgudi, three floors of it, seems to be offering an open threat to the basement Green Leaf in being "King of Kali-dasa road" in the vegetarian category. Will it drive Green Leaf to dust, or will it wither like an old novel as we have seen other hotels on Kalidasa road remains to be seen.
You feel lost in time when you observe the murals. The touch of Shankar Nag, Ananth Nag and the cast of yonder-show place you in nostalgia. Everything is hand painted, just like the old times. The food served on the ground floor does take you back to good old Mysore. Bisibelebath, Filter coffee, Dosa and Idli, with a dash of sambhar, as you go back to the days when life was simple, and the telegraph was still there.
The drawings on the first floor put you right in the middle of Malgudi. You join R K Laxman's "Common Man" in the streets of Malgudi, taking you through the lanes and by lanes of a non existent village, asking for directions which go nowhere.
You could spend an entire evening just admiring the walls, and not having a morsel pass through those smiling lips.
But that is not what the restaurant wants you to have. It means business. So you get an inexperienced staff wearing the same apron as the table cloth, and you get the idea of how the previous group on your table feasted, with stains on the napkins and towels. Thankfully, the dish is not leftovers. The second floor is for family and meals, and if you order the North Karnataka special, you have to take the stairs to the third floor. This odd reason, more of a nuisance, and the stairs which seemed to lead to the North Star, made us to opt for the second floor.
The starters were presented well with some creative vegetable carving and salivating spices on the Paneer and Spring roles. It was crisp and crackled to the T. The Kashmiri parotha with its fruits and stuffing was bang on the money. The curries were average, and did not have much to chomp on. And then we ordered Jola roti, which Malgudi prides itself.
Thankfully, Dad had eaten the best Jola rotis when he was a boy from the hands of an aunt who is a legendary cook in the family. I had friends from North Karnataka in college, and they just gave me Jola rotis by the kilo. Malguid gave us three, shaped like mini papads.
They had some weird powder on them, and loads of butter on top. Looks like they forgot that ghee is the key ingredient, and spicy hand ground chilli powder with spices, one of the secrets for the North Kannadigas abusive dialect, go in an authentic jola roti.
I struggled to finish this non-Malgudi, non-Karnataka dish while perched on an uncomfortable lounge sofa (this annoys me; hotels put this for fancy corners, but it puts us off and most of us never return, not to mention the dirt on it). The desert which said Malgudi special and Toasted ice-cream, existed only on paper. Well, some things are better left in the past.
Malgudi, three floors of it, seems to be offering an open threat to the basement Green Leaf in being "King of Kali-dasa road" in the vegetarian category. Will it drive Green Leaf to dust, or will it wither like an old novel as we have seen other hotels on Kalidasa road remains to be seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment