Think Malleswaram and the first few things to come to mind are temples, traditional markets, and of course, the abundance of eateries. While the old world charisma of the neighbourhood has blended with the city’s rapidly growing landscape, what sets Malleswaram apart from the rest is that every street corner offers a gastronomical experience waiting to be discovered.
That is what took MetroPlus’ ever-ready foodies to Malleswaram over the weekend for a food walk organised by Best of Bangalore.
Starting off opposite the landmark MES College, we walk along the inclined road from 10th Main, 15th Cross to a set of outlets that was already drawing the evening crowd.
The first outlet, ‘Hot Hot Chinese Food,’ has a large board displaying the menu and is said to offer the best Chinese food this side of town.
While the usual suspects including gobi manchurian, noodles and fried rice looked tempting, what caught our eye was the Spanish manchurian. Though we were a little confused about an food stall in Malleswaram selling a Spanish dish in a Chinese menu, we decided to threw our doubts to the wind, soaked in the aroma of veggies fried in oil, spices and sauce and eagerly waited for our plate to arrive.
The attractive green dish with palak, tempered with onion and spices was worth falling in love with.
The next stall is a collegian favourite. Sai Ram’s Choicest Delicacies boasted a range of chats and juices including student’s special chat, floating pani puri, disco chat, crazy chat, Hong Kong chat, kiss masala and time pass chat. We settled for Hong Kong chat, which was an amazing mixture of fryums and chat spices. It was the best chaat we’ve ever had. We pinned the location on our maps promising ourselves a return visit.
Ramya Richard, who was digging into the delicacy said, “This is why Malleswaram is a food lovers’ paradise. There is so much to taste and so little space in my tummy. I’m already feeling full. And the amazing range of floats (a generous dollop of ice-cream on a glass of coke, fanta and other soft drinks), including my favourite dew float (mountain dew) is the perfect way to down these spectacular dishes.
These kind of walks don’t just help us find new eating joints, but also give us a gentle reminder that the way to our hearts will always be through our stomachs and I’m definitely giving my heart here to these dishes!” she beams and goes back to munching on her disco chat.
A slightly long walk later, our next stop was a small kachori outlet near 5th Main, 9th Cross, where we found the vendor roasting kachoris. We buy a portion dunked in sauce. It is soft, crunchy and the sweet and sour filling makes up for the slightly long walk. We also try out the crispy vegetable-filled dosas from the 99 Variety Dosa Point located just down the road. Shiva H, a young lawyer is one of the brains behind ‘Best Of Bangalore’. “We used to be active in the blogging scene in the city sharing information about various hidden facets of Bengaluru. Recently, we decided to organise food walks in well-known locales across the city. We wanted to highlight newer, lesser-known places, especially those dishing out excellent street food.”
He adds, “One of our first walks was at Nagarathpet, a suburb very famous for its dosas. However, the response did not meet our expectations and most people did not turn up, despite online confirmations. We conducted a walk in Vasanth Nagar before deciding to come to Malleswaram. Our focus is on street food primarily. We conducted multiple visits, tasting the food at all the places, before finalising the itinerary. We are thrilled that almost a 100 people showed up. It is great fun and I feel that such walks make you learn more about the city and help you appreciate it better. As far as the food goes, I loved the food at the Chinese outlet, especially the Spanish Manchurian, which has nothing to do with China or Spain, but tastes heavenly.”
The end of the walk takes us to Dosa Point near 10th Cross and finally we top the amazing experience with delicious badam milk at Asha Sweets. We returned with full and content tummies, overjoyed hearts and an experience of Malleswaram we will be talking for a long time.
