by Roopa Pai
Images Courtesy: USKB and Roopa Pai
“It’s best that you take the Metro to come to us,” said Subramanya ‘Subbu’ Holla, the third-generation proprietor of the legendary Udupi Sri Krishna Bhavan in Balepete, when I called him for directions. “Take the Chikka Lalbagh exit out of the Nadaprabhu Kempegowda station – we are about 500 m from there.”
The Bengaluru Metro project hasn’t succeeded, at least so far, in easing the city’s traffic woes. But it can boast of some major wins. One of them is offering a no-fuss, no-stress way for people to access the Pete, the bustling, nearly 500-year-old warren of streets, best negotiated on foot, that was the heart of the vibrant trading city that Kempegowda I built within a mud-walled fort in 1537.
Of the main streets of the Pete, one, the Old Taluk Cutchery (OTC) Road, cuts right through it from its north-west corner at the KSR railway station to the Halasuru Gate Police Station at its eastern edge. A few metres from the point where the OTC road meets the Balepete Circle, on Balepete Main Road, stands an eye-catching, beautifully maintained three-storey building in a pleasing custard yellow, distinguished by its slim central tower of three filigreed balconies and a matching turret. The building has stood there, a witness to the rise and fall of the Pete’s fortunes, for a jaw-dropping 100 years. For every one of those years, it has housed one of Bengaluru’s oldest eateries, Udupi Sri Krishna Bhavan (USKB).
“Actually, we can trace the genesis of USKB to 1902,” smiles Subbu, once he has ensured that I am comfortably settled and tucking into three signature USKB offerings – the oval, roasted-on-both-sides Masaal Dose, the grainy, delicious, Badami Halwa, and a steaming cup of perfect filter coffee – in his unpretentious office at the back of the main restaurant. “That was when my grandfather’s uncle, Rama Holla, who hailed from Kota, the Udupi village to which so many culinary families of Bengaluru – Maiya, Adiga, Karanth, Holla, Hebbar – belong, established the Udupi Hotel and Coffee Club at Balepet Circle. My grandfather, HV Janardhanaiah, joined him in the business, and, in 1919, bought this place. Once his uncle passed away in 1926, my grandfather sold the original business, moved to this building, and established USKB. That’s why we count the history of USKB from 1926.”
If Holla was a competitive man, he would not have let those first 24 years drop unacknowledged into the void of history. Tracing his family business’ lineage to 1902 would bestow upon USKB the coveted title of ‘the oldest still-extant eatery in the city,’ predating current title holder Mavalli Tiffin Room (MTR) by 22 years. All is not lost, however. USKB is still ‘the oldest-extant eatery operating from the same location.’
Holla, who is good friends with MTR’s Hemamalini Maiya, brushes aside such hair-splitting with a laugh. “These things don’t matter in the long run. What matters is the day-to-day work of keeping a legacy business alive, and relevant, in a city whose palate is mercurial, and whose citizens are familiar with the best of world cuisine. What matters is having people who first came here in their grandfathers’ arms return fifty years later, order the same dish, and tell us that it tastes exactly as they remembered it.”
If we agree that ambience is a big part of that kind of memory-matching, USKB fulfils it in spades. Step through the street-facing doors and you will be transported instantly into a sepia-tinted Bengaluru of the 1970s, if not of the 1920s. There are the black and white vinyl floor tiles, arranged in a chessboard pattern; the slow-turning fans set in the wooden beams of the high ceiling; the granite-topped tables and the sensible, straight-backed wooden chairs; the two-faced vintage hanging clock dispassionately marking time; the signboard with the menu, unchanged for close to 70 years; the white tubelights; the sweet-and-khara counter to the right of the entrance with each of its fat glass bottles filled to the brim with Mixture1, Chakli2, Masala Godambi3 and its trays of Damrot4, Mysore Pak5 and Badami Halwa6; and the elegant, understated sign that reads, simply – USKB: Estd 1926.
If there is a ‘dissonance’ in this idyllic scene, it is how squeaky clean everything is – the countertops, the shining stainless steel water jugs, the pale blue walls, the gleaming glass of the sweet counter, the uniforms of the smiling service staff. South Indian restaurants back in the day felt far grimier, not because they weren’t cleaned as often, but because things like hair-oil patches on the walls, fingers in water glasses, and peeling linoleum did not bother most people. It is for this reason that walking into USKB feels oddly like entering a film-set recreation of a 70s restaurant, rather than an actual 100-year-old restaurant.
What brings me rudely back to the present day is a little sign posted at the entrance – The hotel will be closed from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm due to shortage of gas – a direct fallout of the ongoing US-Iran war. The first impact of the current gas shortage at south Indian restaurants in the city had been the disappearance of the dose and all fried food from the menu. And yet, here I was, enjoying a perfectly delicious Masaal Dose. How come?
“Ah,” says Subbu, his eyes twinkling, “we have an electric dose hanchu7 here.” To my ears, that sounds like a travesty. Surely dose is best made on a hanchu placed on a gas hob, not with new-fangled electrical thingumajigs? “This hanchu,” Subbu readies to deliver the punchline, “is 60 years old.”
The story goes thus: In 1965, the Sharavathi hydroelectric project was commissioned, bringing an abundance of power to Bengaluru, and making the AEH – All-Electric Home – a reality. While other restaurants balked at introducing electric mixers and grinders into their kitchens, convinced that not grinding batter or chutney the traditional way, with a grinding stone, would affect the taste, USKB, excited to modernize their already 40-year-old restaurant, ordered two electric dosa hanchus and other equipment, turning USKB into one of the city’s first all-electric hotels. The new hanchus were a different size from their older ones, but they worked remarkably well. “I think it was probably because the new hanchus could accommodate fewer round dosas in each batch that the USKB dosa changed its shape to become an oval one,” says Subbu. “Now it’s a trademark.”
A century-long journey could not have been without its upheavals, surely? “The biggest one happened quite early in our history,” says Subbu, “My grandfather succumbed to typhoid at the age of 36, in 1932, just six years after he had started the restaurant. At the time, my grandmother was carrying my father. It was her father, Manjunath Karanth, who stepped in and ran the restaurant for four years, before he passed it on to his eldest son-in-law, Yagnanarayan Somayaji. It was Somayaji who steered USKB’s fortunes for 25 years, and it was under him that it became an institution in the Pete.”
Tragically, Somayaji himself passed away in 1960, before he turned 45, of a heart attack. But over the quarter century that he had been in charge, he had created a capable second line of command – Janardhanaiah’s sons, Holla Janardhanaiah Anandaram and Holla Janardhanaiah Srinivas. The latter, who passed away in 2006, was Subbu Holla’s father.
Typical of traders in the Pete, the Holla family had always lived ‘behind the shop’. As the family grew larger and the business expanded, the building did too, attaining its present shape in 1954. It was in this building that Subramanya Holla and his cousin, Suri, his uncle Anandaram’s son, grew up, playing cricket in the Pete lanes. As insurance against future discord between the cousins, Srinivas and Anandaram made the wise decision to start another enterprise. It would not only be another restaurant serving the iconic USKB staples but also a mid-size hotel named after their father. In 1978, the brothers Holla established Hotel Janardhana off the Race Course Road, creating a second beloved landmark in the city’s foodscape. When they came of age, Suri took over Janardhana, while Subbu kept USKB.
For over 40 years, ever since he was a graduate student at the historic Sri Jagadguru Renukacharya (SJR) College in the heart of the city, Subbu has been involved in the running of the family business. As the city outside changed in fundamental ways, he made the small tweaks necessary to keep the business fresh and relevant, without ever compromising on its soul – great food, warm hospitality, and the owner’s hands-on involvement.
In 1988, the sweets counter was added. In 2000, USKB began to serve lunch for the first time. “The concept of ‘lunch’ did not even exist before the 50s,” explains Subbu. “People ate their first meal of the day around 11 am, and did not eat again until evening. In the 80s, all stores in Bengaluru, whether in the Cantonment or the city, used to close between 12 noon and 4 pm or so, for an extended afternoon siesta. We ourselves used to close between 1145 am and 230 pm. There was no business to be had at that time of day.”
But there were certainly customers to be served very early in the morning, when the mofussil8 buses disgorged their passengers, along with the produce they had brought to sell at the KR Market, on Tank Bund Road, abutting Chikka Lalbagh. To cater to this market, USKB opened at 530 am. Post the afternoon hiatus, they reopened at 230 pm, this time to receive movie goers on their way to a matinee show at one of the 22 theatres on Kempegowda Road. “New movies released on Fridays,” remembers Subbu. “More food than usual was cooked on those days, because we got crowds of people once the movie had ended. Today, almost none of those 22 grand theatres are standing.”
Then there was the ubiquitous ‘Family Room’ of the 70s. “Restaurants like ours were originally set up to cater to men,” says Subbu. “Bachelors studying or working in the city, married men whose wives had gone home for their deliveries, working men who stopped by for a quick coffee before heading home. But as time went by, and ‘eating out’ lost its stigma, families began to occasionally come in. It was unthinkable that they sit in the main hall, so the Family Room was created as a more private space. For an extra fee of one rupee, they could also opt to sit in a ‘special room’, where they were served on porcelain plates. A couple of decades later, ‘restaurant culture’ became so accepted that we removed the Family Room altogether.”
In 2010, USKB made its first foray beyond the Pete, when Subbu set up a second outlet on Gandhi Bazaar Main Road, above the store of another beloved legacy brand, Sri Venkateshwara Sweetmeat Stall, the Mysore Pak specialists. “When USKB was founded, and for decades after, the Pete was the most happening part of town,” says Subbu. “But things changed in the new millennium, after the IT boom – as a new generation of immigrants moved in, the city’s focus shifted, and traffic became a real issue. People hesitated to come to the Pete – it was difficult to access and no longer on the way to anything. If the new Bengaluru had to be introduced to our food, I would have to take it to them.” In the Gandhi Bazaar outlet, for the first time, USKB introduced the very popular banana leaf lunch. It has since become part of the menu at the Balepete flagship location as well.
The IT boom brought other changes in its wake. As the coastal town of Mangalore near Udupi became an IT centre in its own right, a new and talented generation of Kota Brahmins preferred to find work there, closer to home. “In the 90s, not just our cooks but all our staff came from ‘back home’,” says Subbu. “No longer. While we still have Kannada speakers on our wait staff and in the kitchen, the cleaning staff are all from outside the state. The shortage of local labour is our biggest challenge where expansion is concerned.”
In its 100th year, despite the inevitable challenges ahead, the future looks bright for USKB. There has been a lot of good press around the restaurant recently, a commemorative book will be out soon, and, most gratifyingly, Subbu’s daughter, Sadhana Holla, who has just returned home after completing her Masters in Sports Law in Spain and another Masters in Canada, has expressed her interest to be recruited into the family business. Meanwhile, as president of the influential Bangalore Hotel Association, Subbu himself is often in the public eye, lobbying on behalf of his industry with the government. With the Metro having nixed the access problem, and heritage walks proliferating in the Pete, USKB is all set to be discovered, enjoyed and Instagrammed by an entirely new set of Bengalureans.
In the back room of the building that he was born in, raised in, and has spent every single day of his working life in, Subramanya Holla smiles his gentle smile. “We’ll see what happens,” he says philosophically. “For now, I’m glad we’re still here.”
So is Bengaluru, Sir, so is Bengaluru.
Did you know?
When the noted Kannada litterateur and folklorist Dr Kota Shivarama Karanth visited Bengaluru with his family in the 1950s and 60s, they stayed at the large joint family home of the Hollas, to whom they were related, behind the Udupi Sri Krishna Bhavan. The home had a small opening in the adjoining wall that was an open sesame to delicious food from the restaurant. They had to just tap on it, order what they desired and a hand would deliver it through the porthole once it was ready!
From Growing Up Karanth by K Ullas Karanth, Malavika Kapur and Kshama Rau, Westland Books, 2023
Footnotes:
- Mixture – Indian snack mix
- Chakli – spiral-shaped, deep friend savoury snack
- Masala Godambi – Fried and Spiced cashews
- Damrot – traditional, rich South Indian sweet halwa primarily made from grated ash gourd (white pumpkin or winter melon), sugar, and ghee
- Mysore Pak – traditional South Indian sweet made from gram flour (besan), ghee, and sugar, originating from the royal kitchens of the Mysore Palace
- Badami Halwa – South Asian pudding made primarily from ground almonds, clarified butter (ghee), sugar, and milk
- Hanchu – griddle (a flat, heated cooking surface made of metal)
- Mofussil – used in British India to denote rural areas, suburbs, or provincial districts of a country, as opposed to the principal city or town
