Doors 9 Conference : Udipi

This was presented by Sanjeez Shankar & John Vijay Abraham from IIT in Bombay.

In December 2005, they went to visit a small village to observe a dying sector:Udipi food. He visited a small family-run restaurant where, for 15 rupees he got a meal that included all the rice and bread he wanted, locally grown vegetables he didnt even know. As a farmer’s community, with 15 rupees, everyone could can eat a lot after a hard day’s work. He asked for a bag of chips and got heavily told off by the owner because he didn’t serve that type of food. This change in perspective intrigued them.

In the temple of the district of Udipi, there are 8 monasteries which offer free food every day for 20 000 people. In the 1930s, there was a great number of people from various regions who immigrated there.

A typical Udipi dish would not include any vegetables that have been grown in the ground (no garlic or onions for eg.) which is considered “pure vegetarian”.
In a typical restaurant, a water boy would distribute water and a cleaner would collect the dishes. There would never be any aggregation of tasks. Young boys would stay for a few days, be fed 3 meals a day and be housed and perform these tasks acting as a transient and almost freelancing workforce. With the modernization of the country and the idea of “more” with money and wealth, that workforce is slowly becoming more demanding. Labor laws and restrictions make it hard to hire people on an ad hoc basis and the ideaof making money as a business has shifted. Small Udipi restaurants never took any loans from people, but used to build a business from the ground up and this has changed with micro economies and loans.
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are now big factors for Udipi restaurants and to build up relationships and keep people, they have diluted the cuisine they serve to adapt to various tastes.