To be frank, it has been quite a while since I woke up this early in the morning ! I joined a photo walk and had to be present by 05:30AM at the Besant Nagar beach.
We spent a good three hours clicking pictures in and around the beach. By the time we finished the walk, I was really hungry. Karthik Ganapathi, a blogger-photographer-friend also was of the similar opinion and we decided to have breakfast together. After a couple of suggestions, we headed to Food Karma.
We knew that this place serves ‘healthy’ food made of millets and so on, but wanted to explore a bit more. As we entered, we noticed this was a nice independent house converted into a restaurant. As we peeped in, we realised we had to take off our footwear to enter. There were a few benches in each room. We decided to sit in the verandah which had two benches like school 🙂 Three items were available – Green gram adai, Kodo Millet Pongal, Dhaal Vadai, and of course Sukku Coffee to drink. KG asked if there was a combo, and sure there was ! We ordered one each and were good to go. The food came reasonably fast and in a plate topped with banana leaf. First bite of the Paruppu vadai (Dhaal vada), it was very tasty. Green gram Adai tasted very familiar and it was in fact ‘pesarattu’, that was called adai. The pesarattu was ok, but the ginger chutney served along with it was very yummy! It was easily the ‘Dish of the day’ 😉 Instead of Sambhar, there was a gravy with tomato and coconut, and it was just ok. Pongal is one of my favorite tiffin items and I would say, the kodo millet/varagu pongal was just average. Lack of salt made it even more tasteless. Along with the coconut chutney, it was barely manageable. I was so hungry that the combo wasn’t enough for me, so myself and KG decided to share a plate of pesarattu among ourselves and ordered one. I ordered another Dhaal vada. We asked for more chutney and finished it all quite soon. We ended our breakfast with a sukku coffee. This was more like a hot kashaayam, or in fact, like samahan 😉
The hand wash was a primitive Bucket of water and a sombu (aka mug) in a corner, but it was absolutely clean. It would have been nice if there was an instruction somewhere to remove the plates ourselves after a meal. Since we did not know, we finished washing our hands and then were ready to leave. That’s when they informed us that we should remove the plates ourselves. It was no problem to do it, but it could have been handled better.
The combo was priced at Rs 70, a plate of pesarattu was Rs 50, Dhaal Vada was Rs 15 a piece, and Sukku coffee Rs 10. Absolutely no complaints on the pricing.
While we were there, a group of eight people walked in and occupied the seats in a room. They seemed quite familiar with the place. I also overheard a phone conversation – an order for lunch. So the place is busy and the bigger advantage is that it opens early in the morning and is a plus for the health-watchers and early-risers.
Personally, I am not too keen to visit again, not because the food was bad, but because it wasn’t worth recommending or raving about. A pongal vada and a filter kaapi in Sangeetha or the likes would have been a better option for me 😀
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