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Fiery feast
Mayuri: typical Andhra cuisine spiced with great service. — Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
JUST THE thought of Andhra food — with spicy chutneys, gongura, avakai... — is enough to set the tongue on fire. This fiery cuisine has always been a favourite with the Bangaloreans, and it is not difficult to find a restaurant that provides you with these spicy delicacies in any part of the city.
Mayuri Family Restaurant, on New BEL Road, is one such. Ramakrishna Reddy, who has "no earlier experience in the hotel industry", started this joint four years ago. "Those days, there were no good eating joints in this area, and Andhra food is quite famous here. So I simply ventured into this field," he says.
Walk into this place in the evenings, and you will have to wait for some half an hour to get a table. But, in the meantime, you can bask in the wafting through the kitchen. A wiser thing to do would be to get your seats reserved.
The restaurant has three sections — the main dining hall (with bright red curtains, plastic plants, dim lights that sometimes strain the eyes), the cosy family room in the basement (which has better décor and lights), and a terrace garden that is currently being refurbished.
The food served here makes the wait worth it. The biriyani (chicken and mutton) is popular. It has a subtle taste and comes with two large meat pieces. The restaurant also offers fish biriyani, made only for that select group which can appreciate this rather unusual combination.
The restaurant also offers certain special dishes every day. For instance, the chicken sixer is served only on Mondays, chicken kshatriya on Wednesdays, and a dish aptly named Thursday Rampuri. These are all priced at Rs. 65.
As the restaurant also serves liquor, it offers snacks such as boiled groundnuts seasoned with onions, tomatoes, capsicum rings, cashew nut pakodas, and cheese and pineapple sticks among others, priced Rs. 25 upward.
For vegetarians, there is mushroom masala, paneer butter masala, and Kashmiri koftas to name a few. These dishes, with thick gravy, go perfectly well with the Indian breads or plain rice. Capsicum masala and carrot or mulangi 65 are the other vegetarian specials. There are also dry items such as mushroom kalimirchi (Rs. 54), baby corn chilly (Rs. 54), and vegetable French (Rs. 49).
The Andhra non-vegetarian section offers Kakinada chicken, lemon chicken, ginger and chilly chicken, nati koli fry, and plain chicken curry. There is also a wide range of mutton and fish delicacies cooked in the typical Andhra style. Some of the items are really spicy, and if you are not used to it, it is better to voice your preferences while placing your order. One can also feast on the Chinese and North Indian delicacies here. Why these distractions in a restaurant that specialises in Andhra food? "As it is a family restaurant, we get a few people asking for these varieties as well. And we do not want them to go back disappointed," explains Mr. Reddy. The North Indian platter offers the usual tandoori veg and non-veg items.
Hospitality is another plus at the restaurant, and if you happen to visit Mayuri on a Sunday, you are really treated like a king. You get a sweet beeda too as a bonus.
The restaurant lets out a part of the premises for parties. For a function organised in another place, the restaurant also sends the chef to cook or serve cooked food, as per the customer's demand. There is door-delivery service as well, but it has a different menu. A special offer is full carrier meals, priced at Rs. 89, which is home delivered. One package will serve three adults.
"We make sure the taste remains consistent. So, when one cook leaves, the other is hired only after he passes a cooking test," explains G. Jayaram Shetty, the manager of the restaurant.
If you want to really enjoy the food here, make sure you visit the place on an empty stomach. But weight-watchers will surely be disappointed as the food here is quite rich.
For reservations or door delivery, dial 3416500 or 3410065.
SHILPA SEBASTIAN R
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Madurai
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
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