Saravana Bhavan Bay Area: And the saga continues...

I have documented my experiences with the Hotel Saravana Bhavan franchise here. Thanks to my past experiences, I have remained aloof from their culinary offerings in spite of being based in the Bay Area and having taken up residence within a few miles from their Sunnyvale outlet. I mean, why bother when there are like half a dozen other places that don't manage to get under my skin as easily as HSB does.

But this don't-go-don't-get pissed off policy of mine was blown last weekend when my dear friend K (who finds honorable mentions here and here and who blogs here) drove into the Bay Area from LA with his wife. Now, K has his roots in KK Nagar, Chennai, a stone's throw from one of the earliest HSB restaurants, if not the earliest. Even after living in the US of A for over 10 years now, there is still enough KK Nagar blood coursing through his veins. So he owes his allegiances to the LA Lakers and HSB in no particular order and makes no bones about it too. In other words, while many see Saravana Bhavan as a restaurant, it is a venerated temple of food in his eyes. So even as he was crossing San Luis Obispo, a good 200 miles from my apartment, he announced loudly that we would be having dinner at Saravana Bhavan. Of course!

So when he was about 10 minutes away, he alerted me and I reluctantly drove down to their restaurant, not sure what lay in store. He pulled in around the same time and after the exchange of pleasantries, we entered at 9:52 pm (car clock). Their official closing time on Fridays, according to their website, was 10:30pm, leaving us with a clear 40 minutes of chow time. Plenty, if you ask me, for a casual desi dinner.

There were no ushers in sight nor were any guests waiting to be seated; this was after the wave of diners had faded away for the night. I approached the guy at the cash counter, the only employee that was around, and asked if we could seat ourselves. He specifically asked us to find an empty table in the far section of the restaurant as the other section was being serviced. Sure, no problem. We threaded our way through the diners to an empty and cleaned table for four. Just as we were getting settled, out comes this lady with an attitude.

"Who asked you to sit here?" Apparently, HSB specializes in cold appetizers served with a side of attitude.

"Well, the chrome dome at the cash counter did. Why?"

"We are closing this section now and you will need to be waited to be seated."

"But he specifically asked me to find a seat in this section."

"No."

Conversation was not her strong suite and she being the usher, somehow felt the need to show who wore the pants in the house.

HSB: 1 Slowelectron: 0

So we got up deliberately and moved back to the empty guest waiting chairs. Remember that scene from the movie Meet the Parents where Ben Stiller is forced by the ground staff to wait his turn to board an airplane in an empty gate? Just like that. Anyways, after a few long minutes ticked by, she emerged from somewhere with a clutch of menu cards. We followed her to a table right next to the one we were previously sitting at! Great!

KJ, who, probably because of the long drive that he had just completed, was too hungry and tired to be put off by their "service". He immediately started ordering and shot off a few items from memory and a few others from the card. Our waiter for the night, a portly middle aged man, took our orders and vanished in the general direction of the kitchen. And we started catching up on each other's lives as we awaited for our food to arrive.

With facebook, email and this ancient invention called the phone, we had very little actual catching up to do and since we were really hungry, started casting eager looks, waiting for the food to emerge. Instead, our waiter emerged bearing no food but only bad news.

"Sambhar vadai illa, mysore bonda-vum illa" (We're out of sambhar vadai and mysore bonda)

I may hold HSB in very little esteem. But I've got to admit that I do relish their sambhar vadai, the only redeeming aspect about the whole HSB experience. And so this revelation was particularly damning for me.

"Hmmm...sambhar idly oru plate, vegetable pakkoda oru plate kuduthudunga" shot back K, refusing to be dejected by the freshly delivered bad tidings.

"Sir, dosai mattum dhaan irukku, vera edhuvum illai" (There's dosai and nothing else.) He even closed his notebook with an air of finality. At HSB, bad service was always on the house.

"Oru onion rava and oru plain dosai kudunga" offered K, clearly unable to hide his disappointment. His KK Nagar pride had been punctured by the complete lack of service. By this time, I had lowered all my expectations and was ready to eat anything edible that was still available.

My onion rava came out under cooked in the center and the edges were burnt. How the chef managed to do that remains a mystery to me. K's earlier order, a mixed veggie parotta was somehow delivered and was pretty OK. And the other 2 dosais were nothing to get excited about.

Their red chutney (tomato/onion) was particularly good that evening and when we asked for an extra dollop, were told that, yes, it was not available ("segappu chutney aaidchu Sir").

All in all, that evening had all the elements of a "typical" HSB outing for me: bad service, a lot of attitude and ho-hum food. I'm now back to ignoring them. At least till K returns to the Bay Area.

Hotel Saravana Bhavan

I refuse to bow down to Hotel Saravana Bhavan (HSB), the tallest peak in Chennai's bhavan-scape and arguably the big daddy among the vegetarian restaurants in Chennai. There, you heard it. I'm a rebel of sorts, refusing to be drowned out by the oohs and aahs from the many who venerate the brand and consider a meal there as the ultimate culinary experience under the Chennai sun. Before you think that I'm claiming moral high ground, my avoiding HSB has no connection with the cocktail of crimes that the management has been accused of. For all I know, the owner of the local Sree Bhavan (Adayar) that I used to visit could make Sandalwood Veerappan look like a gardener or Sangeetha's owner make Auto Shankar look like an eve-teaser from Nandanam Arts College.

So why do I hate a brand that is considered as integral a part of the Chennai experience as Marina, Ranganathan street and fleecing auto drivers?

Save for a quick bite at their Vellore outlet en route to Bangalore, I've stopped patronizing HSB since the late 80s which was when one could enter their restaurant and actually find a vacant seat during meal time without having to subtly nudge the elbow of a patron getting medieval on a masal dosai or cough in the general direction of someone trying to send back the final dregs of an expensive coffee in order to announce your arrival and speed things up. (Although, these attempts, more often than not, turn out to be counter-productive.) Well, the scene isn't all that different at the other bhavans, I agree. But even from those visits, my collective HSB memories are limited to getting charged by an unapologetic cashier for a thayir sadham that had a finger nail clipping in it (may be it was from a toe, I'm not sure) while a life-sized Kripananda Vaariyar was smiling down upon us from behind him (HSB, Vadapalani), being reprimanded by a burlesque supervisor in an olive green safari for sharing an item from a "u-share-this-i-break-ur-face" meal (HSB, KK Nagar aka The Mothership) and our Bajaj Chetak getting bumped by their delivery van on Mahalakshmi street in T Nagar.

Call me quirky, but multi-hued uniforms, matador vans bearing the phone nos. of their various branches and ever shrinking, ever expensive portions (HSB definition: A bonda will have exactly 6.023X10^ 23 bondons, at Re 1 per bondon, fried with leftover oil from Milikan's oil drop experiment.) just don't turn me on. So if there exists an overall "HSB experience", then I'm not aware of it.

You know that fraying banian (vest) that you haven't quite given an honorary discharge and thus is still a part of your wardrobe? You don't usually go for it and thus it gravitates to the bottom of the stack and languishes there until either your laundry laziness or a rainy week makes you reach for it? Well, being in Singapore, HSB is that ill-fated banian. The choice of vegetarian restaurants here, even if limited to a handful of eatouts clustered around Mustafa stores, is enough to keep me happy most of the time. But every once in a while, I look beyond them just to break the monotony.

So when a colleague of mine was visiting on a rainy afternoon, I dragged him over to HSB on Syed Alwi Lane for lunch, thus trying to revive a relationship gone cold. We both placed our first orders which arrived without incident. On to the second dish. Mine, the regulation onion rava, arrived and his didn't. So I decided to wait for his dish. After a few minutes, I started to nibble at the edges of my OR. His dish was yet to arrive when I was using the last piece to mop up the remaining traces of tri colored chutney off my plate. The food was not worth writing about but the service was. And write I did on their customer feedback register - a 100 word entry that gave vent to my feelings about the franchise. Amidst all the outpurings vouching for the value, taste and clean food, mine suggested various other businesses that the management should consider. I stormed out of that place with a full heart and a half-full pit, vowing never to go there again. Ever.

For reasons outlined earlier, I've been there twice since (over 2+ years) and just as they maintain the taste and consistency of their sambar down to an atomic level across their outlets, they have maintained their service levels exactly at very bad levels.

The common problems that afflict this place, in my opinion, are:

2 floor seating: It is a double edged sword. Yes, the dining space is nearly doubled and hence little to no waiting. But when you factor in indifferent waiters having to climb flights of stairs to get you the food, the quality of service comes down. Moreover, their staff persuade us to wait and take a seat below rather than go upstairs. A choice between bad service below or delayed bad service above.

Sample this real conversation I had with one of their staff (Italics show the unsaid responses, of course):

Ajay Devgan look-alike: Sir, where are you going? (Abey kidhar jaa rahe ho tu?)

Me: The ground floor dining hall is full. (To take part in the mushaira upstairs and read out a couple of shayaris that I've composed. Hell, last I heard, this is Saravana Bhavan and I'm here for some grub.)

AD: Sir, wait here (pointing to the ground floor entrance) (I dare you to climb one more stair...)

After about 10 minutes, he located a yet-to-be-cleared table and insisted that we sit there.

Hindi Speaking Bearers (HSB): I don't know about you, but when I walk into a *.Bhavan, I want idly, vadai, dosai and sambar. Not iddely, wadaw, dosaw or samburr. The next thing you know, they'll start calling idiyappam as idyuppum and adai as adey. Wait, they have started doing that already! And for the record, it is appalam (pronounced appalaan) and NOT pappad! God help the guy that asks Anil Kapoor for an extra cup of kaarakkuzhmbu or poricha koottu to be brought from one floor below. For some reason, Poornam Vishwanathan's dialog in Thillumullu is ringing in my ears: "tamizhan tamizhana irukkanam, telungan telungana irukkanam..."

Technology: All South Indian waiters evolved from sweaty, oily men processing multiple orders in their brain and relaying orders to the kitchen by a 150 dB yell in the general direction of the source of all the smoke. They never missed an order, the manager never lost a rupee and believe me, things were generally efficient. At some point in human history, HSB introduced the safari-clad homo supervisorous species (complete with a notebook and pen) into the scheme of things and spoiled it for everybody. Since then, service has been reduced to a game of telephone message and people stopped getting what they wanted when they wanted. HSB has taken this one step ahead and have put a fancy order taking machine in the hands of their Supervisaurus (Homo supervisorous mutated). Long story short, your order is lost in translation, data corruption and you can kiss your food good bye. It is one thing to sport cool machines and look like someone from the future. But it is quite another to take an order and get the items served. Which is where they come up short.

Unapologetic, bad service: When I voice my grievance about the lack of service, at least put up a sad face and try to look like someone feeling bad. As soon as I ask for the feedback register (a brown, musty diary that bears two of my long entries), she reaches for it with gusto and gives me a look with a Steve Bucknorish smile that says, "The path of the arrogant restaurant is beset on all sides by the whining of the shortchanged and the cribbing of wronged, overcharged customers. Blessed is he, who in the name of conformance and following the herd, shepherds the hungry through the streets of Little India to our doorstep, for he is truly the loyal customer and the finder of more business. And I will strike down upon thee with bad food and pathetic service those who would attempt to question and challenge my ways. And you will know my name is the Lord when I throw that hefty check upon thee."

I'm willing to look beyond all their shortcomings, yes, all of them, if the food is great. But alas, I've sampled idlies with a molten core, anaemic dosais that clung on to the plate rather viciously, indifferent sambar and could-have-been fried rice. Consistently. I mean, you can be the soup Nazi, but your soup better be kick-ass.

So, 25 years and probably as many attempts later, I'm retaining my original opinion of HSB: Great locations, OK food, bad service and pathetic attitude.