Email
Print
ShareBanglore: As you walk towards Siddique, arguably the most famous eatery in Frazer Town, a familiar and always welcome smell hits your nostrils. It's the smell that can make any foodie's heart leap with joy -- the aroma of slowly roasting meat and spicy kebabs broiling in the tandoor.
Siddique Kebab Centre on St John's Road is busy almost through the day, but it truly comes alive at night when hordes descend on it looking for good, wholesome, meaty food that's remarkable easy on the pocket. The name is a giveaway; of course no one goes here looking for, say, authentic Chinese food (although they do have a smattering of Chinese dishes on the menu). Kebabs are what people line up at Siddique for (sometimes literally).
The grilled chicken -- whole chickens roasted over a slow fire the good old caveman way -- does brisk business here. Manager Jaffar Khan points out that though this is available at a lot of eateries in the city now, at Rs 125 for a whole chicken and Rs70 for half, the prices are the cheapest at Siddique. "Even three years ago, we were selling a whole grilled chicken for as little as Rs50. Prices have gone up since then," says Khan.
Apart from this evergreen favourite, other kebabs also do brisk business at Siddique, be it the bright red chicken 'kebabs' (a Bangalore specialty; nowhere else in India are pieces of chicken coated with red colour and spices and deep fried in oil referred to as a 'kebabs'), the kalmi kebab, the haryali kebab, the lahsoni (garlicky) kebab, the chicken shashlik (skewered pieces of boneless chicken) or the ubiquitous chicken 'lollypop' and tandoori chicken.
Priced between Rs 32 a plate for the chicken kebabs and around Rs 70 per serving for the others, most dry chicken items are a steal here. The gravy items that get picked up most often are butter chicken (though they sure don't make it here like they do in Ludhiana), kadhai chicken and Hyderabadi chicken.
While Siddique is primarily a takeaway joint, it does have seating on the two floors above the ground level as well as a 'family' area. One thing that's missing here is a takeaway menu, and Khan has a unique reason to offer for this deficiency. "People use takeaway menus as paper napkins; we started printing some and realised around 5,000 went missing every day. On top of that, people just use them and throw them around and since Siddique is the name of one of the Prophet's followers, we don't want to allow this disrespect," he explains.
Address: Siddique Kabab Centre, 66/5, St John's Church Road, Near Coles Park, Frazer Town - 560005.Ph:42032737.
