The MTR experience...

MTR or Mavalli Tiffin Room..an iconic destination in Bangalore. This is a place every other Bangalorean swears by and every visitor to the city is told to pay obeisance to. A restaurant serving authentic Karnataka vegetarian cuisine since the last 85 years.

So whats it all about ? Ten of us decided to visit this place. Four out of the ten (including me) had already visited a couple of times earlier. MTR is ideally situated next to a theatre screening the latest Bollywood movies and where tickets are available easily as compared to the new age multiplexes. So all the more reason to check out MTR.

But wait...getting to eat at MTR is not so easy. We had to call up at 6.30am sharp the previous day to book a table. Task assigned to the most ardent person of the lot and completed successfully. So after a 2.5 hr dose of SRK in "Rab ne bana di jodi", we walk down to MTR. (We even sacrificed the pop corn awaiting the feast)
We find an ocean of people at the entrance trying to find a place to stand. Some of us waded through this voracious and cramped mob and reached the cashier and managed to tell him our token number. The cashier pulls out an oily piece of paper and Lo, our names are written on it. Some releif for us and a moment of pride to the guy among us who booked the table. We had lost hopes on this token system by seeing the crowds there. We were told to pay up and go upstairs to the waiting room.
As we climbed to the first floor, we were confronted at every turn with framed black and white photographs of various famous men eating at long, white-covered tables. None of them looked less than 25 years old. I managed to recognise Chacha Nehru among them and was very proud of my discovery. We ended up in a waiting room where you sit and wait for your chance to have a go at the “meals”. We soon realised that the waiting room is more crowded than the entrance. I had heard of these long queues at Tirupati and kind of related this to that. The only difference being we were her to pay homage to the gastric gods. The waiting room has an entrance to the eating rooms and an old guy stands at the entry with a writing board giving you numbers. You will wonder if the man is older than the building or is it the contrary. The old man looks at us and tells us to wait in the "Family waiting room" which is a smaller partition in the main waiting room.... (I need to write about the "family" concept in Bangalore. Any group larger than 4 is considered a family. Even though the ten of us were of ten different blood groups. Are there ten blood groups ?....lets think about that later )

At sharp 2.15 pm we are directed to a small room with one table in it. Ancient fans creaked away quietly on the ceiling, cooling the old, high-ceilinged dining room quite effectively. Ubiquitous dhoti-clad men, with clean shirts, walked about amidst us, plonking shiny steel plates with cup-shaped indentations before us. It was a very tense and heart pounding 5 minute wait, like you are about to get an award.
Eventually the serving starts and goes on and on. A meal which would need an hour to eat needs to be finished in 15 mins. You get into this race against time ably aided by the dumps of about 20 kinds of food served at an interval of about 30 seconds each. Your brain stops working momentarily as you try to finish food on the plate before something else is served on it. This whole meal is finger food, so the diner who is not comfortable eating with his or her hands would be well-advised to ask for a spoon right at the beginning. And mind you, one spoon is all you get. Your stomach breathes a sigh of releif when the Paan is served signifying an end to this marathon. .The only voices echoing in your mind are of the waiters saying " Rice for Rasam Only", "Curd rice is already mixed"and so on.

We end up staggering to a wash basin which was also a unique one with a pedal instead of a tap. Took us quite some time till a nerd figured out where the water comes from. The way out is through the kitchens where i find a PC next to pile of potatoes and onions. I had read somewhere that MTR uses SAP.

Lunch closes at 3PM sharp. The doors are shut after this. We saunter out with paan in our mouths and soon see a huge crowd again at the entrance waiting for the doors to open. Its Dosa time at 4Pm......

Iam incessantly amazed by this establishment which has managed to lure people from across the city and outside and for having made an event out of every meal eaten there !!!