Dosa wrap, uttappam pizza from Sagar Ratna soon
NEWDELHI: How would you react to your favourite dosa served up as a roll , without sambhar? Uttapam served like a pizza slice? Idli and vada offered in paper cups?
This might be a possibility soon as the famous south Indian restaurant chain Sagar Ratna is planning to enter the quick-service-restaurant (QSR) space and offer dishes at half to one-third of the current prices.
The rise of the QSR chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King, and a bunch of domestic outlets, offering food on-the-go, has put south Indian restaurants in a spot, which have been known for casual dining for decades.
“If we have to grow, we would require smaller real estate at low cost, which would allow us to do a large number of orders engaging fewer people,” said Murali Krishna Parna, CEO of Sagar Ratna, which has been around for three decades.
But won’t sambhar going away from dosa a shock for many south Indian food lovers? “You need to imagine that you have to eat dosa without sambhar… We will have different filling for dosas,” said Parna.
For any south Indian restaurant, the biggest portion of the menu is of various kinds of dosas and uttapams. To make the shift, Sagar Ratna is working on a number of options such as offering a variety of chutneys. “If tandoori chicken can be served on a pizza, anything can happen. Sambhar can be dehydrated and used as a paste on the inside of dosa to keep the flavour,” said Srinath Sambandhan, former executive chef of Park Hotels.
Food critic and historian Pushpesh Pant said there are ways of making sambhar into a paste and the flavour can be retained. “The concept will work well here. Dosa as wraps have been served at homes for a long time,” he said.