Telangana Cuisine, the best 'highway' food

By M H Ahssan

If you're on the highway from Hyderabad to Mumbai, you just have to pull over for the best experience in Telangana cuisine. HNN reports.

If you regularly take a road trip from Hyderabad to Mumbai, and are looking for meal stops just before you drive off onto the highway, the long haul bus drivers normally dictate terms. The first stop usually is Madhura. A small biryani joint in Ameerpet, it is very popular with those planning to eat a few miles down the road. Further down at Sangareddy there are the dhabas that allow the buses to drive in, and while the driver is tanking up with tea you the passenger can gorge on everything that a dhaba offers. But if you hold on to your horses for just a few more kilometres and reach Zaheerabad, you can experience the delicacies of India's only organic millet restaurant.

Cafe Ethnic with its warm welcoming exteriors and cosy, rustic interiors is an eating experience that's different from most and tastier, healthier and more nutritious than any other.

The restaurant rustles up a variety of dishes using home grown Telangana recipes that feature everything from foxtail millet to finger millet, little millet to pearl millet and jowar and sorghum.

If it's breakfast time, start with the millet porridge. A taida (ragi) preparation, this is wholesome and delicious to the point of a definite second helping. The crushed jaggery base and the topping of freshly chopped cashew and ground nuts give it a sweet, crunchy smoothness. The cardamom and fennel seeds give it a fresh flavour. You graduate to the South Indian staple, the idlivada combo. But here too, there is a difference. Full of proteins, minerals and iron (between 100 and 500% more than rice) the vadas are made from a dough that blends in soaked blackgram dal and finely chopped coconut, ginger, coriander and green chillies.

The idlis feel a bit coarser than the softer city variants but eaten with the groundnut or ginger chutney, you realise that healthy appetites deserve more than just soft steamed rice patties. The next step is almost predictable but surprises you with the texture to taste. The variety of millet dosas on offer are amazing. Part of their korra krackers range, the dosas which are made from fermented dough that also allows pride of place to blackgram dal, bengalgram dal and fenugreek seeds fill you in the most wondrous way. The beauty of this cuisine is that you feel full but never heavy. You feel your hunger being satiated and your batteries being recharged, but never get pushed to the realm of overfed drowsiness.

If you still feel the need to fuel up for the long haul, don't miss the khichdi. This is either a foxtail or little millet preparation, complete with chopped onions, chillies and greens. The green gram blend and the mustard, cumin seeds, curry leaf and ginger-garlic seasoning make it wholesome and you can also decide to pack it for a filling snack a couple of hundred miles down the road. While the breakfast menu includes other favourites like millet upma, bajjis and puris, and of course, tea and coffee, it's the lunch fare that brings to the fore the planks of taste, health and nutrition that Cafe Ethnic stands solidly on.

Mealtimes at this cafe are delicious thalis or a platter of rotis depending on your choice. The jonna (jowar, sorghum) rotis with masala, paalak and onion as well as the kulchas are authentic in feel and flavour.

The other fast moving items here are traditional crunchies like murukulu and appalu and sweets like paysham, laddus, puddings, badusha, noone polelu and malida. Packed and taken away, they are great companions on the highway.

The cafe is a strict no-smoking zone and while fresh fruit juices and chilled mineral water are available, aerated soft drinks are not encouraged.

The pricing is extremely reasonable and a couple can have a full meal for less than Rs 100.

The normal fare on highways and in dhabas is the oily, fried stuff which tastes great but leaves us with after burn complications. Cafe Ethnic is kinder and allows you to relish its uniqueness without side effects. While it is definitely a highway recommendation, its distance from Hyderabad (just under 2 hours by car) makes it a great option for a Sunday afternoon picnic spot or even an early afterparty destination.