The rustic charm

The New Prashanth Hotel in Basaveshwara Nagar is a delight, from the minute you step in to the minute you leave. And the credit for this goes as much to the items on the menu card as to those who have designed the place.

The restaurant teems with an idyllic charm of the countryside from the word go. The four walls have a different character but are bound by their rural settings.

 If one wall shows women in a village grinding wheat, another shows open fields and yet another captures a train entering a village.

The backdrop is not wallpaper but intricate carvings, reflecting the considerable effort that has gone into them.

“The hotel not only showcases various aspects of a village but its menu has the most authentic vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes from the villages. We are popular for our ‘ragi mudde’, chicken and mutton specialities. Our meals are fast-moving,” explains Harsha V Kumar, proprietor of the restaurant.  

The joint was started with the idea of dishing out home-made food. “It’s quite like what you would eat at home. In fact, our cooks have been brought in from Mandya, Mysuru and the surrounding areas to make sure that the authenticity is not compromised upon. As children, we used to eat home-cooked food and this is the taste we serve to people who come here,” explains Harsha.

Among the dishes, the mutton and chicken biryani are a must try, given that they have got the right balance of spices. There’s ‘naati chicken masala’ that’s cooked in the traditional style. “‘Naati chicken’ means the chicken that’s bred in the countryside and not the one that’s available in cold storages. We don’t believe in buying frozen meat, it is all bought fresh, cleaned and cooked as and when an order is placed. We don’t carry forward anything for the next day,” adds Harsha.

The freshly chopped garlic and ginger mixed into the curry leaves in the ‘chilli chicken’ leave behind a tangy taste.

The other highlights of the menu are ‘chicken pepper fry’; ‘chicken kebabs’, that are first coated with an egg mix and later fried; ‘chicken fry’ which is cooked in ‘methi’ and ‘pudina’; ‘mutton chops’ and ‘mutton keema balls’.

The regulars, however, relish the mutton dishes and the vegetarian and non-vegetarian meals. The eatery is located at No 36/1, KHB, first stage, 6th main, Basaveshwara Nagar. For details, call 23484555.