Tag: tumbler

Idealism

So on Sunday we went to this temple on the outskirts of Bangalore where the in-laws performed Satyanarayana Pooja. There was a small number relatives there, and a large gang on unknown people (it was essentially a public function). It’s a nice temple, dedicated to Shiva, and built in the Kerala style. I think it’s still work-in-progress, and there’s stuff to be done in terms of carvings and stuff. And it’s in a nice secluded spot which adds to the peace of the place.

So the temple has this policy of “annadaana” (rice donation), where they serve lunch to everyone who visits them around lunch time. I’ve written about temple meals before, and you know I’m not a big fan of them. That aside, there was this little act of forced idealism in this temple around meal time, which I wasn’t too happy about.

So the temple doesn’t invest in professional cleaners to clean the plates (I don’t understand why temples insist on serving meals in steel plates – the same is the case in Sringeri and Horanadu also). Instead, you are supposed to wash your plate and tumbler after you’re done eating. In theory this is a fine idea – if we are giving you free food, you might as well do this small help in terms of cleaning up after you. But the problem is this creates huge incentive problems.

There is a reason that public loos are seldom clean – there is no incentive for a user to keep the loo clean for the person who uses it after them. The only way a public loo can be kept clean is by employing paid labour to clean it, where it isn’t hard to align incentives of the cleaners with cleanliness of the loo. Similarly, why would you want to make a special effort into cleaning your plate when some unknown person who you’ll probably never meet in life is going to eat out of it next?

I appreciate the idealism  but the economics simply don’t work. To put it simply – cleaner plates implies greater satisfaction among people who are there at the temple to eat, which encourages repeated visits, which results in greater donations. I’m sure the little investment in people to clean the plates can be recovered many times over in terms of increase in donation. Still, they insist on imposing ideals on people..

I’m not really going to talk about the food. However, I want to briefly mention about the pooja itself, which went on for about double the time as a normal Satyanarayana Pooja (my wife and I performed one such the day after our wedding, so I know the “standard”). The pujari (who is responsible for building the temple) put in a lot of extra fittings, and a lot of the crowd (mostly people unknown to me – it was a public event) seemed to rather enjoy it. I think there is this misplaced notion somewhere that more rituals implies more good karma.

And on a related note, I fail to understand what people mean when they say “pooje is going on well” (I’ve heard this phrase too many times to not comment on it). Does it simply mean “there have been no disasters so far during the pooje” (I can’t think of any other meaning for it)?

Coffee in America

I could have finished this post in one word  – “horrible”. But for the sake of blogging and detailed description, let me sacrifice brevity, like I usually do. I’m writing this after having drunk a cup of absolutely atrocious self-made coffee. Yes, it is proper traditional filter coffee made using Coffee Day Ultra Rich powder, but somewhere I seem to have messed it up. And the quality of this coffee, the first time I’ve made the brew after returning from America, reflects the general quality of coffee they make in America!

I think I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I had good coffee. One was at a friend’s place in New Jersey, where I had traditional South Indian filter coffee out of a steel tumbler. Another was the Turkish coffee at The Hummus Place in Greenwich Village which I’ve talked about in my previous post. That is it! Maybe the odd capuccino somewhere but I can’t remember anything else specific.

The funny thing about America is the size of the coffee lOTas. The average coffee cup in my office was some 400 ml, and each time I would put it under the machine and ask for capuccino it would get filled up! It was extremely disorienting for someone like me who is used to several small doses of coffee during the day. There was another dispenser which dispensed decoction but that was horrible, too. But later on I started drinking from that since I could then control the volume of each dose!

I think I have mentioned this in some other post but another problem in America is they give you hot black coffee and COLD milk. Again extremely disorienting for someone who is used to coffee made with boiling milk. I’m told that the typical American puts such little milk in his coffee that the temperature of milk doesn’t matter. Just that I found it hard to digest (not literally).

Then there was this coffee maker in my apartment. I had to google to figure out how it worked and then realized that an essential part of making it work was to buy filter paper (the first time I’d come across this thing since high school chemistry lab). Since I didn’t have enthu to buy the said paper, I just made do with the two complimentary sheets that had been kindly provided in my apartment. Needless to say the coffee came out to be horrible and I didn’t use the machine again.

One of my regrets of my America trip is that I didn’t order coffee post my several Italian meals. Maybe the Italian restaurants would have made coffee much better than what was available in the rest of the country. And one of the amusing things i remember from the trip is the length of the queues at the Starbucks outlets! That made me realize that people actually go to Starbucks for coffee unlike us here who use Cafe Coffee Day as a convenient hangout location!

Yesterday I did my bit to make up for all the horrible coffee that I’d endured during my America trip. Had two awesome cups of filter coffee at a friend’s place, and then three doses of “sugarless strong” at three diffferent darshini-level places. Unfortunately this morning’s mess-up (now I realize I put 2 spoons of powder into the filter instead of the usual 4) has taken me back to square one, of American quality coffee.

Breakfast at Maiya’s

It is incredible that a South Indian restaurant in South Bangalore can charge forty rupees for a plate of idli-vada, and not just get away with it, but also run a full house. By the time I was getting out of Maiya’s (in Jayanagar 4th block; I’d written about their dinner earlier) it seemed like the first floor was already full and people were being directed to the seating area on the second floor. Apart from these, in a separate area on the ground floor, there is a breakfast buffet (priced at Rs. 125 on weeekdays and Rs. 150 on Sundays).

The food was good but nothing exceptional. Perhaps I don’t find it exceptional since a lot of my South Indian eating out happens at one of the Vasudev Adiga’s restaurants, which I believe are significantly superior to the other “Darshinis”. The food at Maiya’s was approximately of the same standard as that of a Vasudev Adiga’s, and the coffee (served in a silver tumbler) was incredibly superior. And the place was full. I didn’t bother to exactly estimate the capacity of the place but I think the hall seats around 100 people.

The service was good and quick (except for the coffee which took an hour to arrive), and the waiters weren’t overbearing (unlike those on the third floor where I’d had the silver thali last month). It perhaps gives an idea as to what Adiga’s might have been had it gone into the business of running sit-down restaurants. I haven’t tried making an estimate of the finances, so I don’t really know how well it works out financially to have a sit-down restaurant priced at about 100% premium over similar food at fast-food joints.

The success of Maiya’s in Jayanagar also gives us an indication as to what my neighbours the Kamats (of Yatri Nivas, Lokaruchi, etc.) have missed out – having held a virtual monopoly over sit-down south indian restaurants over the last ten years during which most other sit-down places were downing their shutters and most of the new upstarts have been stand-and-eat types. If only the Kamats had been able to get a hold on their quality, they probably wouldn’t have had to go into the business of Chinese restaurants (chung-wah-opus in Jayanagar 3rd block) or capuccino shops.

Also, Maiya’s is what I call as a “full-service restaurant” – one that serves food throughout the day – as opposed to Darshinis which are typically breakfast-and-evening-snacks focused, or the fine dining places which do only meals. What that allows the Maiyas to do is to maximize their usage of space – since they will be using the same seating infrastructure throughout the day. I remember saying a couple of years back that darshinis should have a time-share arrangement with fine-dining places.

Another nice feature at Maiya’s is the tables. They have a large number of tables which can seat two people across, and which have been designed so as to easily join them to other tables. The chairs are also simple and light and can be moved around. This allows the restaurant to easily reorient the tables and chairs depending upon the size of various dining parties, without resorting to making people share tables with strangers (common practice in south indian restaurants).

Today probably the restaurant was relatively lean, so my mother and I got a table for four (basically 2 tables joined together). However, if the restaurant had reached capacity, I’m sure they’d’ve yanked off one of the tables and given it to someone else.

The food is good but not spectacular, but you can sit down and eat. Go on a weekday when it is not crowded, and you’ll enjoy it. Don’t botehr waiting in line to get in to eat on a Sunday – you might as well take a parcel from the nearest Adigas and eat at home.

2 plates  2-idli-1-vada             2 * 40          Rs. 80
1 plate  rava idli                         1 * 25           Rs. 25
1 coffee (silver tumbler)        1 * 15            Rs. 15
1 tea (silver tumbler)              1 * 15            Rs. 15

———————————————————

Total                                                                   Rs. 135

Tips not accepted.

PS: On the ground floor, at the side, they have one stand-up coffee shop, which operates between 6am and 8pm on all days of the week (the restaurant is closed on Mondays). Absolutely brilliant coffee. Among the best I’ve had in Bangalore. I would recommend you to try it out the next time you pass by the area. Rupees ten only.