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| Kali dosa @ SBP |
I like eating with my hands. It’s one of my favorite things about visiting India, this fork-free (unless you must ask), chop-stick-less way of consuming food. It’s efficient, and primal and sensual and nourishing all at once. The rims of stainless steel Indian dinner plates are ideal for providing leverage to fingers and thumbs, bits of chapati or roti. And what would a thali meal served on a banana leaf be if you took a fork to it?
Anyhow, I was thinking this, Friday morning, while eating my ‘last’ breakfast of my trip at the ‘Secret Breakfast Place.’ I wasn’t the only one among the party of 11 who convened for breakfast @ SBP, who was to leave Mysore soon, so a high standard of Indian breakfast was on order.
A KBJ student discovered SBP’s stellar idli several years back and word-of-mouth has led ever-widening groups of yoga students to the place. This is saying a lot as SBP is an out-of-the way tarp-covered shack on a side street in Lakshmipuram and while not so ‘secret’ anymore, you still need a friend to take you there the first time.
Friday’s party filled the two benches and two stools placed on the sidewalk to serve as a dining room. The seen-it-all proprietor took our orders with ease and quickly handed metal plates our way filled with idli and dosa, beet-root sambar and coconut chutney while a cook filled tins with idli batter and loaded trays in and out of a metal steamer. They served other customers who stood or crouched to eat, and handed some of us seconds. There would be no written bill: when we were finished, he told us how much, err, little, we owed (it would be a little over $5 for nearly a dozen people).
Yum. Delicious, inexpensive, fork-free Indian fare!
Deborah Crooks (www.DeborahCrooks.com) is a writer, performing songwriter and recording artist based in San Francisco whose lyric driven and soul-wise music has drawn comparison to Lucinda Williams, Chrissie Hynde and Natalie Merchant.
Singing about faith, love and loss, her lyrics are honed by a lifetime of writing and world travel while her music draws on folk, rock, Americana and the blues. She released her first EP “5 Acres” in 2003 produced by Roberta Donnay, which caught the attention of Rocker Girl Magazine, selecting it for the RockerGirl Discoveries Cd. In 2007, she teamed up with local producer Ben Bernstein to complete “Turn It All Red” Ep, followed by 2008’s “Adding Water to the Ashes” CD, and a second full-length CD “2010. She’s currently working on a third CD to be released in 2013.
Deborah’s many performance credits include an appearance at the 2006 Millennium Music Conference, the RockerGirl Magazine Music Convention, IndieGrrl, at several of the Annual Invasion of the GoGirls at SXSW in Austin, TX, the Harmony Festival and 2009’s California Music Fest, MacWorld 2010, Far West Fest and many other venues and events. She toured the Northwest as part “Indie Abundance Music, Money & Mindfulness” (2009) with two other Bay Area artists, and followed up with “The Great Idea Tour of the Southwest in March 2010 with Jean Mazzei.
