Southern comfort food

One of India’s best-known investors and a stock market expert, Ramesh Damani, catches up with friends once a month in the heart of South Mumbai. Not at any five-star hotel or fancy cafeteria but at a quaint Udupi eatery tucked away in the busy Tamarind Lane opposite Bombay House, the corporate headquarters of the Tata group.

The nearly 50-year-old Poornima has several high-profile regulars, including the Tata Motors CFO C Ramakrishnan and other executives from Bombay House, as also visitors to the Bombay Stock Exchange and the Bombay High Court.

Packed into two floors and a mezzanine, in all totalling just 1,050 sq ft, the eatery is known as much for its taste and hygiene as its consistent quality and reasonable pricing.

The locality boasts the highest real estate prices in Asia and the priciest vegetables in India, but Poornima has remained affordable for the many young office-goers thronging here from all parts of the megalopolis.

It still serves a plate of idli for ₹25, medu vada for ₹30 and lunch thaali for ₹66, when even roadside carts in the area sell two pieces of idli for not less than ₹35.

Pramod Nayak, from the second generation of the family that has been running Poornima since 1985, has kept a tight grip on costs by focusing on fast-selling dishes that can be prepared in advance. That means no cooking, and only serving during peak hours.

Keeping it simple

“We don’t have elaborate menus. Every day, we prepare only 30 to 40 dishes. Items that have a waiting time (like dosas) are not served during lunch hours. This means we can serve more people in the same time,” says the 41-year-old Nayak, from the Donderangadi village in Karnataka, where boys are introduced to mass cooking quite early as they are expected to prepare meals for temple functions.

At Poornima, any item that sells less than 50 plates a day is knocked off the menu. Nayak chooses to concentrate on volumes and quality. “While we don’t cater to everyone, there is enough for most people to pick from. This lets us monitor the quality of every item,” he says.

He also keeps away from rich foods that require costly ingredients like cream and nuts. “Ours is a quick meal-on-the-go and does not need to be rich. More so because we cater to people who are health-conscious,” he says.

Self-service allows customers to place their order at the till and pick up the grub at another counter. “That cuts down staff costs and helps us focus on the food without diverting attention to service,” he explains. The 38-member staff includes delivery boys who supply to offices in Fort, Churchgate and Nariman Point.

Regimented cooking

Nayak has standardised the cooking to such an extent that the bisibele bhaath always tastes the same, as do the pongal-avial and coconut sevai . And this standardisation happens to be the result of a lesson learnt the hard way. Back in 1995, three cooks left the restaurant without notice, dissatisfied with the bonus they had received.

That hampered operations, and Nayak resolved to reduce his dependence on cooks by replacing their famed ‘estimation of ingredients’ with standard measurements for all recipes. Today, the bisibele bhaath , a speciality of Karnataka, at Poornima is made by an Oriya migrant worker who had not even heard of the dish before. And Nayak saves on the high salaries commanded by regular cooks. To retain consistency in the taste, the restaurateur has not changed his suppliers since the ’90s. “I always use Tata Salt and Godrej groundnut oil irrespective of increase in prices,” he says.

He uses only Cow Brand de-skinned urad dal, a key component of vadas and dosas. “Their dal is sun-dried, without using machines. That makes it expensive but also lends it a wonderful flavour,” he says.

Even the coffee powder used at Poornima is made at home by a retired government official. “He supplies the powder once a week. The beans are well roasted, which makes the powder more flavourful.”

Legacy on the menu

Poornima was run by its original promoter, Keshav Prabhu, for almost two decades before Nayak’s father, Jagannathan, took it over on lease in 1985. The restaurant was named after Prabhu’s eldest daughter, and the new management decided to leave it unchanged.

The eatery had for long focused mainly on snacks. “But we realised that snacks barely moved in the afternoon. So we gradually changed the menu.” The Nayaks eventually bought the property in 2002.

The restaurant raises its prices at least twice a year now. “We cannot absorb the rise in the prices of diesel, electricity and labour costs. We have to pass it on to the customers,” Nayak says. He uses an excel sheet to work out the cost of each dish. A margin of 15-20 per cent is added before arriving at the rate of the dish.

Nayak is unwilling to branch out to more outlets as he is unsure about maintaining the quality levels at multiple kitchens. Instead, he is researching the potential for freezing the food made at Poornima’s kitchen. The day he gets it right, Mumbaikars will get to relish their favourite Poornima fare any time of the day or night. But Damani will probably continue to meet his friends at the eatery, as old habits — mouth-watering ones at that — die hard.

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