Brindavanamum Nandakumaranum

Yeah a beautiful song of yesteryears with a cute savithri and gemini (tamizh) and nageswara rao (in telugu). But this is not about the song - it is abt the hotel brindavan on MG Street and the umpteen Nandakumars who have been indulging themselves here and become Gundukumars :-). Brindavan is one of those hotels with still that old world charm - Stone table, white dressed waiters, multi color wash room tiles-food that smells of home and tastes delicious-one should not particularly miss the sambar and rasam which taste yummy. one interesting item is vengaya rasam-the other one is the delicious buttermilk-last but not the least is the tasty home made appalam.

There are a lot of regulars who have grown (literally) with the hotel for the last 10-15 years. May be a little dash of ghee and home made sweet would enliven the proceedings which start and complete within 15-30 minutes (on an average).

The entire proceedings start with placing a nice banana leaf in front of you with a tumbler of water. The southies who are familiar with this step, splatter a small amount on the leaf, clean and wait. Others after a few moment of blank and puzzled stare follow the leaders. First the waiters dressed in white with the chaturbhujam (the four mouthed vessels), start serving the side dishes which consist of yummy things like kizhangu/beetroot/potato..etc kaai, pulikuzhambu, korma, kootu and so on. Then comes the oil less white rotis.

After a few hundred roti’s have embarked on the journey from the mouth to the stomach, it is the time of the mallippoo rice. The rice is normally served in small mounds/mole hills – some people make “mountain out of these mole hills” too.
Sambar is poured on this – u first enjoy the aroma – slowly mix it – and take it down with the vegetables and appalam. (Mind it you have to be careful when the sambar is served as the ladles are quite big and if you don’t warn the waiters on the quantity of sambar served, you may land up trying to do modeling around “sambar flow” and optimizing so that it does not flow on to your pants).
Then comes rasam which is one of the best preparations here- the taste is superb and with rice it just goes into you. The above warning applies here also.

For those mouths and stomachs, where something chill has to go inside during a meal there are some interesting things like cocuum, lemon ginger juices and rose milk, badam milk etc.

Once a conglomeration of things has happened in the stomach, the need for a calming factor creeps in. That is when the ginger/coriander flavored butter milk provides the required effect. It starts with that tinge in the mouth and quickly flows into food pipe on to the stomach, moisturizing and cooling it.

You realize the line of contentment has reached- take a few deep breaths and get out of your chair slowly trudging towards the wash basin with the air of nonchalance of a Buddhist monk.