People bowled over by a restaurant with organic millets

Millets, often called poor man’s cereals, have finally found their rightful place on the urban dining table. Dishes made from a variety of coarse grains, procured from organic farms located in the dry lands of Rayala­seema, have become a part of the menu of IT professionals in the centre of Cyber City of Hyderabad.

The Millet Cave restaurant, located opposite the street of the iconic cyber tower, is a viable business option for the new wave entrepreneur as tasty food with high fibre, high protein and low-fat content suits the palate of  young and others. In fact, the restaurant also succeeded in creating a link between poor farmers and urban people.

It all began with Hema Malini, a homemaker from East Godavari district in Coastal Andhra Pradesh, trying to sell cleaned and packed millets such as sorghum, finger millet, pearl millet, fox tail millet, kodo and proso cultivated in a farm that their family owned at Ahobilam in Kurnool district. The concept of Ahobi­lam Foods was an instant success as many IT professionals found their “native” coarse grains right in front of them.

“We started selling the packed grain on the same premises where the Millet Cave is located. Many customers suggested us that we start a hotel that provides cooked millet food and we agreed,” Malini says. Thus started the journey of a lady from coastal Andhra Pradesh where millets rarely find a place in the diet to a hotelier offering only millets in her restaurant.

However, the food is cooked by 11 chefs all from Coastal Andhra Pradesh who were trained to prepare very tasty food from the coarse grain that could easily fit into the menu of a popular restaurant. For instance, the lunch time thali has a fox tail millet Biryani, a yummy fox tail Bisibele bath, a jowar or multi-millet roti, curries made out of organically grown vegetables, sweet items made of Taidalu, and fox tail millet or ragi (finger millet) porridge.
The restaurant offers buffet lunch and dinner on weekends which has created quite a rave among the families that live around the financial district of Cyberabad, who want to leave cooking to experts. All the food is cooked in earthen pots to retain the nutrients and the buffet line is also completely served in earthen pots which give a rustic look attracting the customers.

“I come here almost every week because the food is cheap and tasty. My energy levels are high all through the day and I rarely feel tired,” D Venumadhav, who works in a multinational company in nearby Cyber Pearl, says. The breakfast menu is also a hit among the bachelors who visit Millet Cave.
Finger Millet Dosa, Korra Dosa, Jowar Idli, multi millet roti, butter milk and milk give the young professionals enough fibre and goodness of the protein for a good start.

“It took three years for us to convert the 40 acre farm which was affected by chemical fertilisers and pesticides in Ahobilam into an organic farm with the help of cow urine and dung,” Malini said.

The family used to procure the urine and dung from goshalas in Hyderabad and Ahobilam. In one year, the demand for the millets has almost doubled forcing the management to procure additional grain from farms of Dharwad in Karnataka and near Ahobilam.

The success, Malini says, is in improvising to suit the popular demand. “Millets are good for people with type 2 diabetes as energy is released slowly all through day. So, we offer them food that has no sugar. We use jaggery, cow ghee and crystal sugar in our sweets. So one can enjoy their food like everybody else only with less refined sugar in it”. After a sumptuous lunch one can even shop at the restaurant which has a separate section offering packed millets, millet sweets, earthen pots, herbal beauty and health products procured from farms from the dry lands. One can even get vermicelli, crispies and powders made out of millet flour.

A new development on the business front is that Millet Cave started supplying their food items to many famous IT companies that spend a lot of money on their lunch. Initially, the companies that offer free food to employees have appro­ached the Millet Cave for one millet item in their menu every day. The mood at the restaurant is upbeat that soon they will be able to cater to the IT sector a total millet lunch package at affordable price--a thali here costs only Rs 80.

The restaurant is being expanded to make it spacious and more comfortable for the families that visit during weekends. The kitchen is right in front of the restaurant allowing the customers to have a look at how their food is cooked.

The model followed by the Millet Cave differs from that of the Ethnic Café run by the Medak-based Deccan Development Society on the national highway near Zaheerabad is that the Cave succeeded in bring ethnic food close to the city dweller. The ethnic café also offers similar menu from millets grown by woman farmers. They also sell millet through a mobile store that is set up near Medak collectorate and in major centres in Hyderabad on specific days.

“People know that millets are good for health. But they don’t know where to shop and many don’t know how to cook them. In the Millet Cave we have tried to answer all those questions. We educate them by screening short films about the work on millets by Karnatak University, ICRISAT, and our own in-house produced stories on the millets of Ahobilam,” says Malini.