Tradition on a platter

Now you can dig into the classic traditional dish from Vijayawada, ulavacharu guddu biryani in Bengaluru. Made with the native ulavalu (horse gram), fragrant rice and vegetables, the vegetarian biryani is a hot favourite. The speciality of this dish is that it is slowcooked with traditional recipes.

Avaialble at United Telugu Kitchens, Kanakapura Road. Call 9459986666.

Olga Koch on her Prawn Cocktail India tour.

“Funny is the thing I value most in other people and funny is what I’m most proud of myself. And I think that’s why I do comedy too, because I think funny,” says Olga Koch, who was in Bengaluru recently.

Originally from Russia, the stand up comic who now lives in the United Kingdom, says, “When I was younger I didn’t know stand up could be a job. There wasn’t a natural career path to it — it’s not like you can go to university to study to be one,” she laughs.

“It is not so much that I wanted to be a comedian, but more that the family that I was raised in and my friends saw me make my way in this field.”

A look at any of her shows online is testament to what she says.

Olga’s brand of humour stems from herself (her surname effortlessly lends itself to a lot of her material), her family and those around her, expanding outwards to encompass her surroundings audience.

The artiste who first visited India in 2023, says, “I honestly enjoyed it even more the second time. I absolutely love Bengaluru — I went to CTR for dosas. I also visited a Jain temple and KR Market.” Olga was in Mumbai and Bengaluru as part of her Prawn Cocktail tour.

“For my first show in India last year, I presented some of the best jokes of my career. I also added some crowd work and offthecuff material. This and time, I performed Prawn Cocktail, a show I debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and went on to do all over Northern Europe.”

“Prawn Cocktail is based on a storytelling format which is an hour long. It has a beginning, middle and end, and follows a narrative structure that I have put a bunch of jokes into,” says the comedienne, who will shortly be taking the show to Australia and New Zealand.

What of the show’s catchy title? “I got my first ever tattoo at the age of 30 and it was a prawn; it gains significance over the course of the show,” she says.

Talking about her process and the raw material for her work, Olga who grew up in the United Kingdom says, “I went to an American school in the UK so I sound American; I’m sort of a melting pot of cultures.”

“The second you start doing stand up as an outsider — you have this very specific outsider point of view which makes it easier to go international. If from