Every city has its share of heritage eateries, places that serve dirt-cheap food and have been doing so for ages. Kolkata has its cabins and sweetshops (although the prices are often a bit higher than “dirt-cheap”). Bangalore on the other hand, has the breakfast spots and bakeries.

The Iyengar Bakeries are a Bengaluru signature, the first of which are believed to have been established in 1898 by the name BB (Bengaluru Brothers). From freshly baked breads to pastry-wrapped snacks like capsicum puffs, from syrup-soaked honey cakes to crispy munchies like nippattu and kodubale, they have it all.

This article isn’t about an overview of Bangalore bakes; I’ll focus instead on a specific dish I encountered in one of the bakeries, the Sreenivasa Brahmin Bakery in Basavanagudi, busy market area of Bangalore. The dish is both familiar yet slightly different. It is steeped in history, and jam-packed with flavour and texture. The name? KBC.

For non-Bangaloreans, that acronym conjures up the image of a deep-voiced, bearded old man talking to a screen and asking you incessantly about your financial plans. But for Bangaloreans, it’s a different matter. The name, like the BLT, essentially lists out the components of the dish. Unlike the BLT however, each component in a KBC has a lot going on.

The K stands for Khara bun (ಖಾರ ಬನ್). It is essentially a spiced bun, flavoured with onion, spices and of course, curry leaves. All bakeries stock fresh khara buns daily, and just on its own, it tastes great: melt-in-the-mouth, slightly sweet, with a delicate hint of spice. The bakery also serves loaves of sliced khara bread, perfect for a morning toast or a simple sandwich made with onion, tomatoes and cucumber.

The B stands for benne (ಬೆಣ್ಣೆ), or butter. While a khara bun tastes great just as is, it reaches another level altogether when paired with butter. Bread and butter is a no-brainer combo anyway. Bangaloreans strongly believe in the adage that benne makes everything better, as evidenced by their butter-drenched dose in places like Vidyarthi Bhavan and CTR.

And finally, C. The crowning glory of the dish. Sure, khara bun and benne are already delicious but…. I’m sure you see a pattern emerging. But it is the C which makes the KBC, which brings us to Sreenivas Brahmin Bakery, established in 1956, considered the source of this delicious snack. Although you can see it all throughout the city now, it traces back to this 66 year old bakery.

C stands for Congress Kadkekayi (ಕಾಂಗ್ರೆಸ್ ಕಡಲೆಕಾಯಿ). Kadlekayi means peanuts in Kannada, that’s the easy bit. Why “Congress” is a much trickier question to answer. Some say that the split peanuts stood for the split of the Congress Party in the 70s. Others claim that it was simply because people from the party frequented the bakery during the days of the emergency for party meets.

The owners, in a YouTube video, claim that the dish was created by Ramaswamy Iyengar during the Emergency of 1975. The name came about because during the British era, secret messages used to be passed among members of the Indian National Congress through sacks of peanuts. It is all all murky territory, and something I’m definitely not willing to get into any further, so let’s move on to the less controversial stuff.

Roasted peanuts mixed with oil and spices, all done by hand, the spice mix being an obvious secret, finished with a generous smattering of curry leaves, the SBB Congress Peanuts are the ultimate bar snack, spicy and slightly greasy, the perfect match for a pint of cold beer. But if you’re being creative, you can find other applications for it too.

Gujaratis love dabeli, a dish of spiced mash sandwiched in a soft pav, adorned with pomegranate seeds, sev, and spicy peanuts. The Congress peanuts would fit right in and legend the dish a slightly South Indian flavour profile. You wanna up the South factor you say? Replace the mash with a dosa-filling style preparation, tempered with curry leaves and mustard seeds.

In fact, Sreenivasa Bakery has a dish like that, minus the accoutrements. The palya bun is, as the name suggests, a bun stuffed with palya, a term referring to the potato filling used in dosas and the like. “Palya” is a great example of how food vocabulary is determined by cuisine: neither Hindi nor Bengali have any separate word for “dosa filling”. And if the carbs on carbs routine of the palya bun bothers you, let me introduce you to another bun-based dish served by the bakery: the KBC.

It starts off with a khara bun split through the center, slathered with a generous quantity of benne, and then liberally sprinkled with a handful of Congress Kadkekayi, before closing it up like a burger and cutting it into quarters, like a cake. And voila! You’ve got a KBC on your hands. If you’re feeling cheeky, you could call the KBC a “peanut & butter sandwich”.

The texture is unique. The bread is incredibly soft and melts in the mouth, the peanuts have a conspicuous bite, and the butter acts as a lubricator, preventing the dish from getting too dry, although the super-fresh khara bun also plays a role there. But what really makes the dish is the flavour. Both the khara bun and the peanuts are spiced, cushioned by the fattiness of the butter. The combination shouldn’t work, but somehow, it does.

I’ve tried upping the texture game by adding some chopped onion and throwing in some coriander leaves for freshness. while they definitely improve on the original, the KBC is strong enough to hold its own. Both the Khara bun and the Congress peanuts are wonderfully versatile enough to act as springboards for dishes on their own accord: the khara bun can be used as dinner rolls or burgers, while the kadlekayi can be made into a peanut chaat or sprinkled into jhalmuri.

In the mood for more fusion? May I present a glorious South Indian-Gujarati fusion of dabeli, palya bun and the KBC. Slice open a khara bun, toast it in butter, add a generous layer of palya, close it up, and oll the edges in crushed Congress peanuts. I call it the KPC: Khara bun-Palya-Congress peanut. Copyright pending.

If you’re thinking of getting your own Congress Peanuts, there are online stores that sell the stuff, and you could either make your own Khara Bun if you’re feeling ambitious, or simply buy some pao if you’re feeling lazy. Make sure the buns aren’t warm when you slather on the butter, as the creamy texture is a crucial cushion for all the spice. If you insist on having a toasted bun, try mayonnaise instead.

And if you’re ever in the city, definitely drop by Sreenivasa Bakery to get a taste of the real stuff. At just around 40 rupees, it is rather pocket-friendly. Is it the best application for the khara bun and Congress peanuts? Probably not. Is it a great, cohesive way of showcasing two amazing products of the Iyengar Bakery tradition of Bangalore? Definitely!