As the name itself suggests, Hotel Parankuti is a restaurant that specializes in serving traditional food—food peculiar to the Vidarbha district of Maharashtra, a cuisine that may look rustic and un-polished but is so wonderfully delicious that one can find no comparison…! To give you a fair idea of the experience of dining at the place, let me, instead of anything else, talk you through the menu I would recommend!
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Welcome!
You have little idea of how pleased and elated I am to once more take you out to a place where I have been for so long! It gives me immense pleasure to welcome you to my own hometown, and twice that to serve a traditional meal for you! Come! Let us, in this review, enjoy an interesting traditional meal together. I promise you, you’ll enjoy this dinner with Juggernaut…
Dinner with Juggernaut—the review
Us Indians have not really forgotten our traditional food. Our meals, all the noise about changing eating habits notwithstanding, still comprise of the basic things that our ancestors would have for their meals. But the “traditional Marathi meal” was picked up and embroidered by cuisines of so many cultures, as newer people of various parts of the country settled in this land of saints, lion-hearted kings and rustic godmen, that what remains is a homogenous blends of the cuisines of several cultures. The Marathi meal lost it’s charm long ago. What you see, in an ordinary household on an ordinary day, is only the ghost of the traditional meal.
So it gives me greater pleasure to invite you to Hotel Parankuti where I assure you, you shall find the finest of our traditional foods prepared and served in the same romantic charm that you’d find in the modest ambience of the good-natured farmer in the countryside. But I must warn you! This is a farmer’s meal! A meal that he would enjoy after a day’s hard work in the farm with his bullocks and ploughs… a meal that is simple in it’s taste, unostentatious, but still satisfying, gratifying and incredibly enjoyable!
Ah, come, the plates are served!
Starters…
The Marathi farmer does not believe in pre-dinner snacks. He begins with a splendid serving of thick, hot, steaming bhakari, a chapatti-like pancake made out of bajra or jowar dough, and the famous, spicy jhunka (onion subzi with besan, encore!). With that, he has spice-and-garnish stuffed brinjal. As a little side-dish, there is garlic chutney, spicy, mischievous and enjoyable in taste and pickle of mango which is also spicy but incredibly enjoyable. Food is spicy, my guest, but I assure you it shall satisfy you completely. You will enjoy the feeling—tears running down your face because the food is spicy, a mild sweat settling on your forehead! But this slowly, slowly, relaxes you, releases the heat in your body and you feel oddly comfortable in spite of the strong tastes… it is an experience that one must have once in a life, an unparalleled experience!
If, my dear guest, spicy food does not appeal to your palate, rest assured! We are good hosts and we will never forgive ourselves if you are not satisfied with your meal. Try some aaloo-subzi. I assure you, this is not the subzi you will find in an average restaurant. This is the traditional Marathi preparation—sweetish, crisp and undeniable!
Rice
There are myriad preparations of rice, each one just as unique and unforgettable as the other, as classical and peculiar to this region as the other, each one that will not only transport your taste-buds to Utopia but would also assist your stomach to digest what you’ve already eaten! While on the one hand you have the dahi bhaat with a mild tadka of oil, mohri and karhi patta, a preparation which is agreeably Gandhian in it’s simplicity, on the other hand you have the brilliant wadaa bhaat which is rice with crushed wadaas and the phenomenal tadka, a preparation which is undeniably ostentatious in it’s appearance, taste and feeling! I can not forget to tell you about the gola bhaat, the usual masala rice with deep-fried dumplings of a dough that you crush and mix so the that the rice is a mischievous blend of crisp and soft, a marvelous attempt to please the teeth and the tongue!
If my dear guest prefers to eat a rather simpler rice dish, yet not as simple as dahi bhaat, then I’ll be only glad to serve him the masala bhaat. Masala bhaat is the Marathi version of the Pulao—but mind you, it has a spicy taste to it as well, a taste that can find no comparison!
Sweets
If I invite you to my home for a classical Marathi meal, then I must offer you one sweet that is typical of this region and typical in it’s taste and concept—the puran poli! Puran Poli is the regular chapatti stuffed with “puran” which literally means “filling agent” or “putty”, which is made out of chana daal cooked in jaggery. Yes, it is slightly heavy to digest, but I must ask you to have some! You shall never find anything like it and you will never want to live too far from a place that offers this! Enjoy it with ghee, lots of ghee, and at my place, my dear guest, ghee flows like water! It might sound a rather repulsive idea for fitness enthusiasts, but those who care about digesting the food must never ignore the ghee!
But rest assured, I do have other easier-to-digest sweets for you! Can I ever forget the basoondi? Basoondi is a milk sweet that you can prepare by almost the same method as preparing the rabri, but I assure you it is much easier to digest and less thick. It is a pure pleasure to sip basoondi like a rustic, with loud slurps, from the bowl and that is, mind you, the way you must savor it! Eat to your health, eat heartily without hesitation!
Side by Side
Along with the main course of the meal, we have other very interesting things to offer. The karhi bhajia a dish that you’d probably find elsewhere in India as well is also a dish in our staple food. It might sound so, but karhi is not at all heavy to digest, in fact it has the same digestive properties as curds or chhaanch, another inseparable ingredient of our meals, except that it has, again, a spicy taste that can not be compared yet never forgotten!
Peripherals
At Parankuti restaurant, everything is served in the exact manner as I’ve described them. The ambience of the hotel is also that of a village home of a farmer. The walls resemble the mud-caked walls of the villages, with traditional paintings on them and utensils hanging to them to remind you strongly of being in a village home! I assure you, you aren’t expected to sit cross-legged, there are tables and chairs!
And if I must mention it here, in this atmosphere purified by gourmets and traditional cuisine, the restaurant is affordable, very affordable!
So, when do I pick you up? Seven, tomorrow?