After 70 years of serving the fastest food in India, Rama Nayak’s Udipi restaurant can still teach the world a thing or two about fast food, dedication and quality.
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A stern new sign on the wall of Ram Nayak Udipi Restaurant in Matunga, Mumbai, informs customers that anyone who leaves sambar or rasam uneaten will be fined eleven rupees for the felony. Sambar and rasam, both dishes based on pigeon peas or split red grams (tur dal in India), tamarind water, vegetables and spices, are a standard in any south Indian meal, and Ram Nayak’s Udipi is no exception. An unlimited lunch here costs 125 rupees (about US$ 2) and has remained predictably delicious for decades.
You might argue it’s none of a restaurant’s business what a customer does with the food once he’s paid for it; that it is his prerogative to waste it should he so choose. Ram Nayak Udipi would disagree and slap a fine on you, pointing out that they’re in the business of feeding people, not throwing food away. Our mothers have always told us that the food we leave behind on a plate would have meant a meal for some hungry soul somewhere. With the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) keeping a sharp focus on food security worldwide, we now have numbers to describe hunger and malnutrition. FAO figures from 1996-98 show that India had 200 million undernourished people who regularly received 290 kilocalories less food energy than the 2,500 kilocalories an adult human being needs. This puts India on par with Yemen, Burkina Faso, Congo, Kenya, and Mali.
I did a little basic mathematics, starting by assuming about 1,000 people at lunch at Rama Nayak’s and that each of them consumed about 30 grams (about three tablespoons) of pigeon peas in the meal. According to nutrition data from the United States Department of Agriculture, each 168 gm serving of pigeon peas supplies 203 kilocalories, or 1.2 kCals per gram. In other words, if a customer wasted all his sambar and rasam, he’d be throwing away some 36 kCals. If all the diners wasted all their pigeon peas every day, that would be a staggering 36,250 kCals, enough to furnish 15 hungry Indians with their entire daily nutritional needs. Of course, in a well balanced meal, only 55% of the calories would come from starchy staples like pigeon peas, with the rest from other food sources.
Small penalty
Eleven rupees is a mere 18 cents, a seemingly small penalty to pay for ignoring a fellow human being’s hunger. And yet eating at Ram Nayak’s is a constant reminder that there is more to food than eating it, and that a restaurant that takes its calling seriously has to take hunger, hygiene and nutrition equally seriously. This unpretentious Udipi boarding and lodging place has been punctilious about its responsibilities in these areas since 1942, when it was founded by A. Rama Nayak, a traditional restaurateur from the Udipi region of western India. Udipi’s restaurateurs understand the preparation and service of fast food in a way that a Colonel Sanders or a Macdonalds might envy. Long before factory-made burgers, centralized manufacture of sauces and gravies, and the assembly line production of ‘fresh’ food became part of western dining, Udipi’s culinary entrepreneurs have been showing Indians that it is possible to make fresh, hot food of predictable high quality on the spot and serve it in minutes. The foods are neither dry nor pre-configured. Sambar, for instance, is liquid, and messy to prepare and to serve, and yet the man from Udipi somehow manages his kitchen deftly, minimizing wastage, maximizing service and quality, and making sure that his restaurant does well for no other reason than that it feeds its customers well.
A sign above the kitchen says, in typical Indian Civil Service English, “Those willing to see the kitchen may do so.” I certainly did ‘will’ to see the kitchen, so with permission from Satish Rama Nayak, the owner, I ambled in. You have to remind yourself that the room you are in has remained more or less unchanged for over 70 years, long enough for layers of sediments, colonies of microorganisms, rodents and ancient odours to establish themselves. Yet this restaurant has only spotless, speck-free surfaces, and they are the result of diligent daily scrub-downs with detergent soap and water.
The staff — waiters, cooks, vegetable peelers, deep fryers, chapati makers — are all from Udipi, and some like Muthaya, 48, have worked here for decades. I have been eating at Rama Nayak’s for decades myself, and remember Muthaya as the man who could weave in and out of the daily crowd of waiting customers while balancing five stainless stell plates laden with food along his arms. More conscientious customers, like your humble narrator, eschew plates and eat of plantain leaves. Rama Nayak’s scores a direct hit here in environmental terms. Plantain leaves cannot be re-used, are bio-degradable, and save time and energy in the kitchen since they are not washable. Of course, mixing and eating rice and liquids on a flat leaf requires a special talent that south Indian children learn early as a life skill.
A typical lunch at Rama Nayak’s would start with three portions of vegetables being served on to the leaf. A second waiter will drop some freshly made lime or mango pickles, and a little salt, while a third will serve you a small cup of yoghurt and a glass of salty buttermilk. Sambar and rasam will be ladled into their cups, and then comes the rice. A bit of boiled and mashed pigeon peas might be dropped on to the rice along with a dot of ghee. Make a well in the centre of the rice and pour the sambar in, mix well with fingers, and your meal meal begins.
Pigeon peas had a bad time of it in 2012 in India, when a drought in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka — major producers of pigeon peas — created a production shortfall of 30-40%. The pulse, which used to sell for about Rs.35,000 per tonne, suddenly began to hit close to Rs 50,000 per tonne. It even began to look as though imports from Kenya might become necessary. A good restaurant changes its menu prices when ingredient prices go up. In Rama Nayak, they held the price line — but like a good parent, added a Rs.11 penalty on anyone who took pigeon peas lightly.
There are other things you cannot do at Rama Nayak’s, and the man in search of a fine dining experience should be aware of them. You cannot sit and shoot the breeze with your friends over cocktails or a post-prandial liqueur. At Rama Nayak’s, it’s you in communion with your food. Eat as quickly as you can without looking like the hungry man of Asia, and then leave, so that the next one waiting can be fed. But what Rama Nayak lacks in finesse and social graces, it more than makes up in diligence, total attention to food and quality, and a strong sense of mission.
When you leave after your meal, if you don’t look practically smug with contentment, then Satish Rama Nayak will be frowning, and wondering where he failed.