Khanavalis of Bangalore

Have you tried making jowar rotti?

The kind made with sorghum flour, rather than the wheat flour most of us are more accustomed to using? The experienced jowar rotti maker will tell you it isn't all that difficult to pull off.

I am not that person.

There is something about getting that rotti right. The flour, the water, the patting, the heat, the flip. Mine don't always make it to the table looking quite the way they should.

So, when I want a good, wholesome, homely meal centred around a well-made jowar rotti, I find myself a Khanavali.

And Bangalore has quite a few of them.

You will often find them tucked away in residential parts of the city and even in commercial buildings, alongside the more prominent Khanavali chains. They may not have much to say about themselves from the outside. No fancy interiors, no elaborate menus, no particular restaurant fuss.

You go in, sit down and eat.

And what you eat is food deeply rooted in the everyday cooking of North Karnataka.

So, what exactly is a Khanavali?

At its simplest, a Khanavali is an eating house or mess serving home-style food. The word has come to be associated particularly with the vegetarian North Karnataka meal built around jolada rotti, the jowar rotti.

But North Karnataka isn't one cuisine. It is a region with many food traditions, shaped by different communities, local ingredients and ways of cooking.

So a Khanavali isn't simply a “North Karnataka restaurant”. It is one expression of a much larger food culture.

And that meal is quite something.

Jolada rotti comes with dishes such as badanekayi ennegai, palya, jhunka, dal or other pulse preparations, pudi, pickle, onion, curd or buttermilk, and often rice and sambar or rasam. Holige may make an appearance too.

Jowar is central to the meal. Food is built around pulses, seeds and hardy crops. The flavours are spicy, earthy, pungent and robust.

Badanekayi ennegai is a good example. Small brinjals stuffed with a spiced mixture and cooked until soft.

There is palya, a simply cooked vegetable preparation. Jhunka, a dry, spiced gram-flour preparation. Pudi, a spice powder eaten with the meal, often with a little oil or ghee.

It is a proper meal, the kind that leaves you feeling well fed.

The rotti is only the beginning

But what I also enjoy about a Khanavali is everything that comes with it.

The stuffed brinjals, vegetable palyas, dals and pulses, pudis made with things like groundnut, sesame, flaxseed or Niger seed, the chilli and spice, pickle, raw onion and, somewhere along the way, a little curd to balance it all.

You can put the meal together bite by bite in different combinations.

Tear off a piece of rotti. Scoop up some ennegai. Add a little pudi. Eat it with onion. Bite into a green chilli. Try it with the palya. Follow it with curd.

There is a rhythm to it.

Your food arrives on a steel plate (“chrome” plate, apparently), sometimes on a banana leaf.

The waiting staff move between the tables carrying large serving vessels. Sambar, rasam and palya come around, along with offers of another helping of whatever you've finished.

At a small Khanavali, you will often see women sitting on the floor in a humble kitchen, making jowar rottis one after another. No measuring cups. No fancy equipment. Just their hands, the dough and years of knowing exactly what it needs.

The rotti goes onto the hot tava, puffs up, and somehow the next one is already being made.

You don't have to make much of a production of ordering. The food keeps moving. You eat, someone comes by, you nod, another serving lands on your plate.

It is quick, generous and inexpensive.

There are regulars, families, migrant workers and professionals, people eating alone and people who know exactly what they want. Some know their meal before they have even sat down.

And then there is holige.

A sweet flatbread, often filled with sweetened dal or sweetened coconut, it comes at the end of the meal. By this point you may be completely full, but somehow there is always room for a little holige.

And that everydayness is part of what makes it special.

It is food that comes from somewhere

One of the things I find interesting about Khanavalis is that they aren't trying to create some generic idea of “regional food”.

The food comes from how a particular family from North Karnataka makes these common meals, using the ingredients, crops, flavours and ways of cooking that are familiar to them.

Jowar and other millets, pulses, groundnuts, seeds, chillies and seasonal vegetables all have a place in the food traditions of North Karnataka. The food is robust and full of flavour, but it doesn't rely on elaborate restaurant techniques.

The food is not trying to explain itself.

It just is.

From home to the city

There is another part of the Khanavali story that I find interesting: Bangalore.

People come here for work, family, education and opportunity. They bring their languages, habits, festivals and, inevitably, their food.

Many of the city's Khanavalis are connected to people who came to Bangalore from North Karnataka. For someone living away from home, a meal of jolada rotti, ennegai and pudi can be more than lunch.

It can be familiar. It can be something you grew up eating. It can taste like home.

And for someone who didn't grow up eating it, a Khanavali is an introduction to another part of Karnataka.

That is why it has found such a natural place in Bangalore. It makes this food available as an everyday meal, without turning it into an occasion.

Students, workers, office-goers, families and people living away from their own kitchens can walk in, sit down and have a proper meal without much ceremony.

And then there are the new Khanavalis

Of course, food changes as it travels.

The Khanavali has changed too. What was once a small eating house can now be a multi-outlet business, a delivery kitchen or a meal box arriving at your door.

Basaveshwara Khanavali, for instance, now has outlets across Bangalore, from Majestic and Jayanagar to Yelahanka, Marathahalli, Electronic City and Koramangala. Its menu includes meal boxes packed with jowar rottis, curries, rice, sambar, junka, salad, raita and pickle. There are also places like The Khanavali Company in JP Nagar where you can build your own Khanavali meal, choose from thalis and order family-sized combinations.

So the food has travelled well beyond the neighbourhoods where you might once have expected to find it. It has adapted to Bangalore's newer ways of eating too: delivery, takeaway, meal boxes and multiple outlets.

And yet, at its heart, it is still a meal built around a jowar rotti, a good ennegai, some palya, pudi and whatever else comes with it.

For those of us who haven't quite mastered the art of making a good jowar rotti at home, well, there is always a Khanavali.