Food, of course, is everyone’s biggest comfort zone. And for years, southern comfort has come wrapped in flaky home-made dosas or just rice. So they ate idlis for breakfast, rice for lunch and when they walked into a restaurant for dinner, they would stare really hard at the menu and come up with an imaginative ‘paper dosa’. But the Reddys and the Iyers, they are-a-changing.

Vani Reddy, a 45-year-old entrepreneur in Chennai, says, “These days, when we go out for a meal, we have butter naans with paneer butter masala. We didn’t do that before.” There you have it, the chapatification of the south, the redrawing of the Indian food map.

Sandeep Kachroo, executive chef at the Taj West End, Bangalore, sniffs the aroma of larger changes. “Over the past few years, say around six years, the major investment in the IT and ITES sectors have been in the south. As a result, the demographics have changed. Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad have a more global feel now. Around 60,000 migrants live in Bangalore today and between 2,000 and 4,000 north Indians come to the city every day. As a result, the local population has been exposed to a wider range of cuisine. It’s not surprising that naan, roti, paneer butter masala and dal have found their way to most menus.”

Krishna Shantakumar, general manager of a hotel chain that runs the restaurant Ebony and the cocktail lounge13th Floor at the Hotel Ivory Towers in Bangalore says, “For 11 of the 16 years Ebony has been in existence, we did not have butter chicken, tandoori chicken or rogan josh on the menu. But, we found that this was consistently the most ordered items. Five years ago, we finally had to give in and include these items on the menu. If you can’t beat them, you better join them.’’

... contd.