Marvalli Tiffin Room

Would you believe the best authentic meal we’ve had in India was served to us by barefoot men from tin buckets?

Before we left on this trip, when I was asked, “why India?” I would half jokingly say “because I love Indian food”.  Unfortunately, we’ve been sorely disappointed by much of the Indian food that we were served in Rajasthan and North India (Tibetan momos being the one notable exception).  We had some excellent meals at high-end hotels but the bulk of what we ate was greasy, heavy and uninteresting.  The meat was stringy or fatty and the vegetables were cooked within an inch of their life.  Lisa and Nicholas were pretty sick the entire time we were in Rajastan and Nora refused to eat anything.  After the first week, it wasn’t just the kids who were clamoring for pizza and pasta at the end of each day.  Things improved once we made it further south as we could start eating some pretty high quality seafood and fresh fruit but on the whole this vacation has been a culinary let down. 

However our lunch the other day surpassed our initial expectations, heartened our foodie souls, and let us in on a uniquely Indian experience.  Our guidebooks (which had led us astray before) both recommended Marvalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR), a family-run Bangalore institution established in the 40’s, as having good vegetarian thali and so when we were hungry after our morning of sightseeing, we decided to give it a try.  The MTR is a cross between a Chinatown dim sum palace, a southern cafeteria and a church spaghetti dinner.  We walked in and first paid for our lunch then joined in a jostling line of Indian families waiting for Sunday lunch.  Once they called our number, we were rushed into a drab dining room and seated at a plain wood table set with no silverware, no plates and no menu just cups of water and cold pressed-grape juice.  A barefoot server came out and one dropped metal plates on our table.  The plates themselves resemble middle school cafeteria trays but with a crescent of  seven divots surrounding the main eating area.  Then with in a few minutes the food started making the rounds.  

Thali consists of a set menu and our servers couldn’t explain what they were serving as they spoke exactly as much English as we spoke Malayalam. About ten different servers (all barefoot!) went from table to table unceremoniously dolloping each dish out of two gallon metal buckets into the appropriate divot on the plate.  The food was delicious, vegetarian and a wonderful mix of spicy, sweet, sour and salty.  The pros ate it with just their hands and fresh whole-wheat dosas (pancakes) while we resorted to using spoons that were the sole piece of silverware provided to us.  The locals’ use of their hands was doubly impressive, as napkins weren’t provided.  We counted at least twelve different courses including dessert of coconut/burnt sugar/chickpea goo and we were totally sated for a whopping $1.65 per person. 

Nicholas adds: “ Despite how much my parents say that the food at the MTR was delicious.  I still think that the meal was the worst I had in all of the two months.”