Food in Hyderabad

Its been a while since I blogged about food in Hyderabad. Well here goes...

A few year ago if one wanted sizzlers and russian salad there was a hole in the wall in Banjara hills called Flame which subsequently closed down. Then we found Indi Joe's in the City Center mall in Banjara Hills. They have excellent starters and sizzlers. I especially like the Pomfret sizzler - its light and tasty. I didn't like the mexican and the pastas much - but then that might be a personal taste.

Well we all know Paradise. The food there is cheap and good. But one day we decided to visit Persis Gold the fine dining restaurant in Paradise and even though the food was good I came out completely unsatisfied. The reason being that you are served the same fare as the takeaway but the prices are atrociously expensive. So my take is just do takeaway do not eat in the restaurant, at least not in persis gold.

Green Park has some excellent food. We usually do the ala carte`. The hot tandoori rotis with no butter or oil are just exquisite and they go well with pretty much any gravy. Stay away from the chinese and the continental - stick to Indian. What I like about Green Park is the perks you get there - the kids get balloons and colouring books to play with, you get starters on the house, mineral water is on the house, you get kashmiri tea and pan at the end of your meal - its just a nice experience on the whole.

Hyderabad house is a nice place to pick up food from. But be careful there are 4 hyderabad house kitchens which supply food to all the other centers so it is important that you get the food from a kitchen that you like. So enquire from where it is cooked, the one at SR Nagar is pretty good - not sure about the other 3. They have a grilled pomfret that is not on the menu but is exceedingly good - so ask for it. Of late the have Paneer tikka too that is very good.

Some of the other places that I have done take away from and have not been disappointed are Cafe Bahar and Bawarchi.

Places in and around SR Nagar - Good dosas and idlis at Udipi Home and Hotel Satyam. You also get good chat on Vengal Rao Nagar main road. Talking about chat another good place to have chat is at the Jubilee Hills check post. For chinese food visit Peking Palace in Ameerpet behind the HUDA Maitrivanam building - they have some good dishes - I generally stay away from the soups.

Talking about chinese food - Chinese Pavilion on road No. 1 Banjara Hills has some good food to offer. Its a small restaurant and the ambiance is very nice. For Mexican food visit Tex Mex opposite KBR Park. They have decent Mexican food.

Chutneys is an excellent place for idlis and dosas - just stick to the regular fare do not go for any of the fancy dosas like paneer dosa and stuff. Try out the steam dosa and the 4 uthapams from the fancy dosas - do not try anything else. Also do not have the regular food there not that great.
For a cheap wholesome full meal try out the messes - Harsha and Kakatiya the more famous ones in the Ameerpet area. Its simple to order - just walk in and say "meals parcel" and you are all set.

For pastries and doughnuts visit Ofen in Banjara hills - they have a nice selection but they are very pricey - so when you go there make sure that your pockets are loaded.

The Bare Necessities

I was watching Jungle Book with my daughter today and some of the words of the song "The Bare Necessities" struck me as very interesting.



Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That brings the bare necessities of life

We all have worries and strife but we should look for the bare necessities the simple bare necessities of life.

And don't spend your time lookin' around
For something you want that can't be found
When you find out you can live without it
And go along not thinkin' about it
I'll tell you something true

The bare necessities of life will come to you

This part of the song is very interesting - we spend a lot of time looking around for something that can't be found, but do we stop when we realise that we can go on with life without it. Very rarely we do - but the song goes on to say that if we go on not thinking about it we wont really miss it and the bare necessities of life will come to you. It is the bare necessities of life that are important.

Outsourcing ATM Maintenance - Next big business

This is one of my speculations - things I feel will be the next thing coming.

Of late all of the cell phone service providers have been hiving off the the setting up and management of the cell phone towers into separate business and some of them are even selling them off to third party tower management. What I think ultimately will happen is that the tower companies will put up the towers and manage them and they will lease out space on the towers to cell phone service providers to put their equipment on them. This has a a lot of benefits

- The same tower can be used by multiple cell phone vendors thus sharing the cost of ownership
- Takes away the management of towers away from cell phone service providers thus helping them to concentrate on their core business
- Ensures someone is looking after setting up new towers and also managing them thus giving better performance.

On a similar note there has been quite a bit of news lately about RBI wanting banks to allow customers to use any ATM to withdraw money with no extra charges (Right now if you use an ATM of another bank the charges can vary from nothing to Rs. 50). As a consumer this is a wonderful idea and banks that have few ATMs (HSBC, Kothak Mahindra Bank, etc) love this move and are all for it since they get a wider ATM network for free and on the other hand banks that have a large ATM network (SBI, ICICI, etc) suddenly lose their edge of having a wide ATM network.

What I feel will happen is that banks will do something similar to what cell phone service providers are doing and will hive off their business of setting up and managing ATM networks into a separate business and ultimately sell it off to third party vendors. That way the company that owns the ATM network can charge various banks on the transactions done on the ATM. I think the same benefits the cell phone service providers get from selling off their tower businesses will be applicable to the banks doing this. This way it benefits the bank and the consumer and the RBI gets what it wanted.

Lets see if this is what will happen.

He sure can "break" anyone

I was driving the other day and I noticed this truck filled with sand in front of me and a couple of things caught my eye.

1. The spelling of power "break" (should have been brake) and I thought to myself if this guy even nicks my car I will for sure be broken - so it is quite appropriate.


2. Notice the guy sleeping on top and relaxing - this is a moving truck and he looks like he is sun bathing on top

Well thats India for you - you never know what you are going to see next. So when in India always keep your eyes open and your camera shutter off :).

Not so frequent posting

For the next two weeks life is going to be a bit too busy to post everyday - the reason being that ourspace.in is having its annual christmas sale and I am helping out there. I am sorry about this and I thank all my regular readers for coming back each day and checking if there is something new that I have posted.

Please use the new features that I have added to the blog and that is to be notified by email or subscribe to the RSS feed. That way you don't have to come everyday to the website. In case you have any queries in using either of these features do let me know by mailing me at sudeep.dsouza (at) gmail.com.

I thank all the readers who come to my blog for giving me an average viewership that is out of the single digits for a complete month now. This is for the first time I have achieved this since I started writin my blog almost 3 years ago.

How wrong can Sunil Gavaskar get ?

Being a bit busy with life and work and not getting much time to follow the cricket match - I was intently reading the sports section of today's paper and saw that India pretty much lost all hope of winning the match on Day 3. So I started to read some of the columns to understand what happened when I came across a column by Sunil Gavaskar that said "Ishant not yet ready for Test cricket".
And then this is what I read at the end of Day 4 - Ishant takes a 5er. Congratulations Ishant and I hope you continue to defy all your critics.


The point to note here is that commentators and columnists have to be careful about what they say and write. Ishant is just starting his career and something like this from someone as experienced as Gavaskar is totally out of line.

This is not the first time that this has happened and if you have noticed they never apologize or accept that they made a mistake which makes them look bad to the public.

The Christmas Sale is back

For the second year running we are conducting the annual Christmas sale at St. Theresa's Church at Erragadda, Hyderabad. This year we are back with a lot more variety. We have also been able to get Crib sets which was requested by a lot of buyers last year.

So if you are in and around Hyderabad please do visit our sale. Also spread the news among your family and friends about the sale. Check out the Christmas Sale website that we have put up.