I like little islands of patterns in a sea of randomness. This article serves the dual purpose of setting in action one such symmetry, while giving me an excuse to reminisce. Just over two years ago, I went to Bangalore for the first time. And it took me hardly any time to fall in love with the city. Immediately after my return I wrote a few articles dedicated to my visit, one of my favourites of which was about my trip to Vidyarthi Bhavan, one the iconic dosa spots of the city.

So when I decided to return to Bangalore two months later for a stint of residency in NIMHANS, a neurology and psychiatry institute located in the heart of the city, I knew that I had to go out and explore a few more of the dosa spots in the city. I immediately ticked off the nearest option, the iconic MTR or Mavalli Tiffin Room. The dosa there is much thinner and lighter, more papery compared to the slightly pillowy texture of the Vidyarthi Bhavan dosa, served with a tiny bowl of ghee, in case you wanna indulge.

The ideal time to visit these places would be in the morning, since they open early and usually stop breakfast services by 11 or 12. Made of rice and filled with potato, the masala dosa is stuffed to the brim with carbs, the ideal calorific meal to get you ready for the day. Add to that an ungodly amount of fat, and you’ve got a calorie count that you do not wanna show your gym trainer. The most extreme version of this was something I saw at Cafe Amudham, another spot quite near my hospital. 

I have visited Cafe Amudham a couple of times with a buddy from neurosurgery after finishing our night shifts together. The dosas there are similar to the ones at Vidyarthi Bhavan, except for the fact that the dosa is also liberally sprinkled with milagai podi, a mix of toasted lentils, dried red chilli and spices, all ground up into a glorious powder which you would wanna snort (but probably shouldn’t because of the chillies). Add to that a more than necessary amount of ghee, and you’ve got yourself a beast of a breakfast. 

I spent a year and a half in Bangalore in total, and one more place had remained unexplored all this while, primarily because of the distance. And considering how high this place ranked in the realm of legends, I knew that something had to be done. So I brought up the idea to yet another friend, this time from neurology, who I knew was going to take the bait, and he did. Having done his MD from the area near this legendary joint, it held a special place in his heart, and was more than willing to accompany me on this dosa-centric road trip.

It takes an hour from NIMHANS to reach Central Tiffin Room or CTR, located in Malleswaram in the North of the city. Probably for the first time ever, I was out for an evening dosa, and I was eagerly looking forward. The traffic could do nothing to curb our enthusiasm, and before we knew it, we were there. We reached there right on time, just before the crowd started to swell, and we got a table within fifteen minutes of reaching the place, which is quite quick.

The place had that old-school vibe, with dimmer, warmer lighting compared to Vidyarthi Bhavan, a wooden board listing the names of dishes and their ridiculously low prices. The fact that I could somehow make out the dishes from a list that was written only in Kannada kinda made me think that I had really imbibed the city in the past year and a half. Anyways, I left the ordering to the veteran, who promptly went for two dosas, preceded by bondas and followed by the non-optional tumblers of filter coffee.

The bondas and bajjis, served with a side of coconut chutney, are the go-to evening snack in Karnataka, our equivalent of telebhajas, the perfect thing to pair with your evening tea or coffee. The Mysore bonda is made with a mix of flour and yoghurt beaten till light and fluffy, then deep-fried in oil. Bajjis are the South Indian equivalent of the besan-dunked pakodas of the North, with my favourite version being the mirchi bajji, made with larger chillies, lighter in colour and lower on the Scoville scale. 

The bondas, fluffy on the inside with that ever-so-slight crusty crunch, was perfect to whet our appetite for the main star, the iconic benne dosa or butter dosa. Unlike the half-moon shape of Vidyarthi Bhavan or the triangle of MTR, the dosa in CTR is rolled into a cylinder, served in their iconic 3-compartment yellow plastic plates, the other two compartments filled with sambhar and chutney. While the sambhar was decent, the chutney felt a bit watery and slightly underwhelming.

But the texture of the dosa was very, very interesting. Like the Vidyarthi Bhavan dosa, it had two layers, the thin crispy layer outside and the fluffy uttapam-like consistency beneath, but the balance was tilted a lot more towards the crunch. Sure, the Vidyarthi Bhavan version had a crisp crust too. Apply a little pressure on both versions, and you can see the benne oozing out of the pores which, I might say, works tremendously in their favour. Still, there was a crucial difference. 

Texture is a crucial player in the dosa experience. The MTR dosa is thin and pliable, the Vidyarthi Bhavan is a balance of crunch and pillowy softness. The CTR version, on the other hand, is the epitome of crunch. The thinnest bits were almost translucent with fat, and shattered with a glass-like crunch, like a thick potato chip, the perfect textural foil to the soft palya or potato filling within. Although the palya itself was under-seasoned, the shards of salty, fatty dosa crust made up for it. But my friend’s reaction to the place is what I remember most vividly.

There is the food, sure, but, places like these give you more than that. With the old-school tableware, the unpretentious air, and the wooden board on the wall with writings and prices from a different era, you feel transported back in time. For just a little while, you suspend reality; step away from the hustle and bustle of daily life into a rare, cherished moment of peace, where you can catch your breath, and fondly think about the good times, before inevitably getting back up and heading out into the real world yet again.

It was amazing to see the look on his face as soon as we walked in. Every once in a while he kept asking me what I thought of the place, how I liked the food. And yes, the food was good, but there was something on his plate that was missing from mine: the element of nostalgia. But hey, now that I am back in Kolkata and writing this article, I share in his feelings of nostalgia too, looking back fondly at my time in Bangalore, to all the things I have learned, and the friends I made along the way. 

As I had written in my first ever write-up over 5 years ago, “while a dish may be good on its own, it is the juxtaposition of the food and the surroundings that heightens it to another level”. From the exhausted exchanges at Amudham about the things that went south during the eventful night shift, to the back-and-forth banter with a friend revisiting his college days with unbridled glee, the ambience and the conversations add a great deal to the overall experience. And in the end, you remember these almost as much, if not more, than the actual food on your plate.