They serve sambar with soul music

A little south Indian idli, vada, coffee kind of place in Frazer Town just turned one year old. Not so remarkable, is it?

Well, consider this — while your plate is heaped high with steaming idlis, you feel like you’re inside a morphed Hard Rock Café, with classic rock music playing in the background and LP covers of say Beatles, or Doors or even Bruce Springtseen on the wall, interspersed with electric guitars. Welcome to Café Idly.

Café Idly was started by 24-year old Dinesh Bhaktinathan, a Frazer Town resident, along with his brother Rajesh and a friend Joy.

“I always wanted to run a café. I even did a correspondence course in hotel management to get hold of the basics. We did not have money enough to start a bistro and had to think hard of ways to beat the competition, because Frazer Town has a lot of eating joints,” says Bhaktinathan.

A burger place was out of question and so was a restaurant proper. With a lean budget, the trio felt that a south Indian fast food place was the ideal thing to start. But they were determined to make it stand out in the crowd. And that’s when their shared love for Western music came to the rescue.

“Bangalore being the rock capital of India, we’d grown up listening to music. Joy and Rajesh were more seriously into it, while I was a listener. And we thought it would be a great thing if we could offer our customers the kind of music we like to listen to,” says Bhaktinathan.

The shared pool of LPs, cassettes and CDs were brought to the table and a lively soundtrack was added before the café started doing business.

While Bhaktinathan and Joy quit their day jobs to start Café Idly, Rajesh came on board a few months later, once the venture had taken off, quitting his IBM job. So far, the three of them man (or should it be men) the café with the help of a few part time employees.

As Bhaktinathan explains, “We didn’t have time or resource enough to educate customers on the finer points of south Indian food. Idlis worked best for us. You can either plate it up straight from the steamer or pop one in an oven to warm it up as soon an order comes in. It truly is a fast food, for the whole process takes less than a few minutes”.

It is also a matter of pride for them to run a fast food joint that serves up healthy, low-calorie food. Café Idly serves idlis, vadas, dosas, khaara bhat, samosas and coffee. While there are no immediate plans to expand the menu, they certainly have bigger plans to expand the place. And the bigger venue would translate to regular live performances by the city’s bands.

“We started Café Idly with a mission to serve both music and food. Our first year, we took a few steps towards reaching that goal. Hopefully, this year will see us delivering on the promise,” says Bhaktinathan.