Meals at Hotel Brindavan

If you like the traditional South Indian meal, you know, sambhar, rasam, rice, papad, all those vegetables and curries, head over sometime to Hotel Brindavan. It's just off MG road, in a small alley next to Styx (the pub), which is before Cauvery Emporium (interesection of MG road and Brigade road). The hotel is at the dead-end.

Walk in to the hotel and walk straight through and you'll come to the "restaurant". The place is pretty cool even though it's not air-conditioned. High ceilings, lots of tables arranged in rows, with about eight chairs to a table.

Buy a coupon at the counter, head over to a table, sit down and wait for a couple of minutes, and the waiters will start serving you.

First comes the banana leaf and the steel tumbler for water. They'll wait for you to clean the leaf, so there's no pressure. You start off with chappatis; as many as you want. All you can eat rice and papads too. They're generous. They serve one or two vegetables, a gravy dish, and some raita sometimes. The rasam and sambhar is delicious. They give you a katori (small bowl) of buttermilk and some curd too.

The service is quick and there's not a lot of waiting involved. The food is simple and it's not oily and won't make you feel bloated. Not unless you eat a lot, which you probably will, since the food's quite good.

Plus, at Rs. 40, you can't beat the price.