The restaurant called ‘Hali Mane’ in Malleswaram turned out to be a real treat to the senses (especially taste and smell)…The name literally translates to village house and you would expect it to serve authentic Karnataka cuisine…besides which you can find the usual North Indian dishes like paratha-kurma and naan/roti/kulcha with butter paneer masala on the menu…I wanted to taste something different so I tried akki roti that’s roti made out of rice flour and ragi roti made of ragi flour…these are served with 2 types of chutney…they tasted really good…
They also serve ragi balls with I think sambar...not sure…its supposed to be really healthy but as with most people, I decide if a dish is palatable or not by the looks of it rather than its nutritive factor…so eating that was totally out of the question :P…
The second time round (this place is totally worth the second visit) we had meals it’s a mixture of North and South Indian dishes… I liked the way the meal was served…they give each person a bottle of mineral water and serve each dish separately rather than pile everything on the plate all at once …also you can order the separate meal for kids which serve smaller portions ...you are served a tambulam (that’s nothing but paan), banana and ice cream to round of the meal…on the whole it was satisfactory but I was not very impressed by the side dishes served with the naan…the subzi’s could have tasted better…
I feel they can completely do away with the North Indian section of the menu and come up with more dishes that can be billed under the category of ‘authentic’ Kannada food…but I can sympathize with most restaurateurs who open restaurant for the masses and are in the constant fear of going under if their hotel does not have the multi cuisine tag attached to them… But Hali Mane seems to be doing pretty well for itself judging by the never-ending crowd outside probably because it’s able to provide quality food at inexpensive rates…but to tell you the truth the major USP for me was the cleanliness aspect…
