Udupi Temple Food and Udupi Restaurants

Udupi restaurants are ubiquitous in Mumbai. In Mumbai, there is hardly "a station" where an Udupi restaurant is not available. Each city code probably has one! As ubiquitous as the Irani restaurants in the past. A few have given way to McDonald's and Starbucks.  Udupi restaurants are now synonymous with Udupi restaurants.  Udupi chalte hai...means let's go to an Udupi restaurant and not let us go to Udupi town in Dakshina Kannada. Udupi evokes images of a small, clean restaurant and evokes smells of good food....idli, dosa, vada, sambar.

 

Here is an interesting article in Times of India: Decoding the Udupi brand of restaurants. 

 

Some excerpts from the article:

"Basically, it was migration of Brahmins to other parts of south India and Bunts to Mumbai in search of greener pastures which resulted in the 'Udupi brand' spreading to other parts of the country.

 

"Nagarajan Udup, VP of Ocean Pearl, says: 'The district gave birth to disorganizedly organized sector as far as food is concerned. The Udupi brand is not owned by anyone, it's a collective ownership. Those who have understood the changes have survived, while others perished.'

 

"While Bunts who opened vegetarian restaurants diversified into non-vegetarian hotels and bars, Raos, Udupas, Adigas, Shanbhags, Kamats built their brand names, and in time, became niche restaurants."

 

He missed out Prabhus. Any other surnames missed?

 

An Indian Express article provides more details about Mumbai's Udupis in Mumbai’s Udupi restaurants, the first port of call for many migrants, is a part of its storied past and present.

 

Article begins:

Legend has it that the story of the Udupis began in the 1920s when a young boy migrated to Mumbai from his coastal village in Karnataka. Rama Nayak was 11 at the time.

...

For years, Mumbaikars have gone to the Udupis for a quick fix of dosa, idli and medu vada. The restaurants are credited for having introduced the city — and much of the world — to these staples, which were once part of temple cuisine at the famous Sri Krishna temple in Udupi, Karnataka, set up by Madhavacharya in the 13th century.

...

Rama Nayak was 11 at the time. With a job at a restaurant, he worked his way up from chopping vegetables and making rotis to managing the kitchen. In the late 1930s, he started his own stall in Matunga, a central Mumbai locality with a strong Tamilian and Kannadiga population, selling idlis and dosas. In 1942, he opened Udupi Shri Krishna, said to be the first Udupi restaurant in the city. Fort and Matunga eventually emerged as hubs for Udupis that served fresh, steaming breakfast and teatime snacks to officegoers.

 

The article concludes:

Today, the menu in many Udupis includes everything from pav bhaji and samosa to pizza and Indian Chinese. And the sambar is often sweet. Those that stuck to pure menus and did not adapt have had to shut down. While it’s tough to place a number to them, officials of the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association say that over 150 such eateries have shut in the city in the last 10 years.