Sunday, December 25, 2011

Idli House

Rest : Idli House
Loc : King Circle, Matunga
Meal : Breakfast

This week has been quite a gastronomic feast as the sister in laws were in town, we went around and got quite a few solid meals and missed out on some as well. Sunday morning is usually, samosas and papdi and dhoklas or pancakes or Cafe Madras. This Sunday morning though was all about Idlis.
The younger sister in law is quite a fan of the rice caked goodness and we thought we would give it a try.


So where would one go to try out Idlis in this town? Well Idli House of course, located in the South Indian stronghold of Bombay - Matunga. There is literally a HORDE of restaurants to choose from in a 5 min radius of Kings circle. 


From the Rama Nayak family comes a restaurant focused solely on Idlis, near two dozen of em from various parts of the South. I started of course with the simple Butter Idli, although this was not regular packaged butter but more like fresh, unsalted churned butter and that my friends is what makes all the difference. I will not try to express how good this was but i will say that i ate if fairly silently besides the odd moan and then i ordered another one.


This was the Idli wrapped in mudho leaves, a little bit of a chore to open up and then consume however, pretty good,


The yellow idlis (Rava Idli and Kanchipuram) were actually the weakest of the offerings, not bad but certainly not a patch on the rest of the selections.



The idli upma was another pretty spectacular, fluffy sprinkled with sev, peanuts, the first time i have had something like this. Not pictured here is the idli rasam which was good and the  pepper idli which was terrific, it was not pepper sprinkled on top of the Idli as one would think but mixed in the batter i reckon. Brilliant.


All this washed down with some brilliant filter coffee, better than Cafe Madras which i thought was terrific so far. So good that between the 7 of us we had about 13 cups.

While there are more idlis, there are some other accompaniments which can be tried, the red chutney is brilliant, the white not so great, the sambar not too bad.

Overall, the place is very small, can barely seat 15, the rest though can eat at the standing table. The service itself is quick, no-nonsense and a little on the unfriendly side. The gentlemen sitting on the cash counter (the younger of the two older gentlemen) had a terrific sense of humour and saw me enjoying the sambar and brought me another one without asking.

He cleared up the dishes himself as well, great to see. Its the cuisine of hard working men and made and served with a lot of hard work as well. All in all a must do, go on Sunday when you can park.

Food : 9/10
Service 7/10
Damage : 630 for 7 of us.


2 comments:

Kalyan Karmakar said...

sounds interesting...I have heard of this place and the name 'idli house' gave me the impression that its a new fangled place...i had a nice rava idli at mtr bangalore and a fantastic killer guntur idli at chutneys hyderabad which made me feel that there is more to idli that what is served at office canttens at mumbai or shiv sagar bandra

Gaurav said...

It is pretty good, in fact Matunga is littered with a lot of these stellar South joints.

And you are right, there is quite a large family beyond the little white idli.. Idli house would be a pretty good starter !

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