There was this viral video (reel) of a Bengali film director talking about food. Currently, I can’t find it anywhere (even my good friend Bing failed to find that one). Anyway, in the video, the director was asked to list the eateries where you can eat “good food” in the city. His list was quite good! He had listed the classics (if I remember correctly): Shiraj, Jimmy’s Kitchen, Zam Zam, Gupta Brothers, etc. But then he went on to say: “Udipi Home. You’ll get the world’s best dosa there.”
I smirked at that sentence, but I knew exactly where he was coming from.
The food one eats while growing up shapes the taste buds and eating habits. You will tend to like something better than another because you have had that food quite often in your childhood and it was tasty! For example, for a long time, I never really liked dosa. Uttapam used to be my favorite South Indian dish.
Dosa (or dOse) is a South Indian delicacy. While growing up in Kolkata, we mostly used to get dosa or masala dosa from Haldirams or some sweet shops. And I was never fond of them. This changed in 2017 when I had the South Indian masala dosa for the first time in Bangalore. The crust was different. The ingredients and masala were different. It was a whole new world—or probably universe. I remember having masala dosa thrice in 6 days while I was there.
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So when the film director claimed that Udipi Home serves the “world’s best dosa,” I am quite sure that’s because there might be very few places in the city that serve genuine South Indian dosa. So, it is quite natural to feel that they are the best dosa in the world. (Pardon my generalization here, I know even though there are many varieties when it comes to South Indian dosa, but you catch the drift.)
I was in Bangalore from March 2022 to October 2023. Initially, I had developed the habit of having filter coffee from a nearby Udupi in the evening. When I visited Kolkata back in August 2022, for the first time from Bangalore, I was craving filter coffee in the evening. I was around Park Street, tried my luck there, and couldn’t find any places.
This time though, I discovered a newly opened shop at “the heart” of the IT sector in Salt Lake: Mysore Canteen. When I googled it, its backstory seemed quite interesting. It is opened by a half-Malayali, half-Bengali guy who was raised (drum rolls, please) in Bengaluru. Whenever he used to visit Kolkata in his childhood, he used to crave those “world-famous” Bengaluru dOse that are “golden crisp on the outside but soft and slightly thicker on the inside.” So that motivated him to open the shop!
I was kinda happy after reading the article. I started booking a cab to go to Mysore Canteen, only to realize that they don’t open at all on Saturdays!
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