Suggi - a taste of Malnad in South Bangalore

    A couple of weekends back, my wife and I woke up late as usual on a Sunday and decided to have lunch outside. The only difference being, we wanted some homely traditional food instead of foreign cuisines. Having heard about Suggi from a colleague at work I decided to give it a try. Malnad regions broadly refers to the Western Ghat regions - but in essence covering places like Coorg, Chikmagalur. Hence the cuisine is steeped in items that are grown in abundance in these mountainous regions. Even though their specialty items might be meat based, they do have an abundance of veg dishes for the not-so meat minded population. Having made up our mind quickly, we landed up at Suggi at sharp noon. You are welcomed at the doors by staff in traditional attire with pleasant music playing in the background. A very quick noticeable observation was that all the staff had a genuine smile on their face as they moved across the tables. We were informed that a-la-carte exists and so does the buffet which prompted me to do the walk-around. Around 28 dishes adorned the buffet with enough on the veg option too, making me decide on the buffet.
The first course - soup was brought to our table with the simple choice being tomato for veggies and chicken broth for non-veggies. The soup itself was light, fragrant and had bags of flavor - a perfect starter to the meal.

With that out of the way, we decided to attack the main course. I made essentially two trips to the main course table and I shall explain it pictorially :-)

The number of meat dishes blew my socks off - mutton roast, chicken sukka, fish fry (anjal), chicken pepper. I scooped portions of all these dishes onto my plate and  went over to the bread/rotis section - neer dose, akki rotis, kori rotis and maiige idlys. The neer dose and the idlys were out of this world, extremely fluffy and light - perfect for wolfing down half a dozen.The chicken pepper stew and sukka were both good, spicy and flavorsome. The mutton preparation was a little off for me as I felt that the mutton had to be cooked a little bit more - it had a slightly tough taste and texture to it. The fish fry was perfectly done - meat fresh and a spicy red chilly masala paste set off the dish in your mouth. For the traditional, you also had access to raggi mudde (ragi balls) and sambar. Apart from this, you had the standard fare of palak rice, plain steamed rice, rasam and chicken biryani with raita. The biryani was not too shabby but I preferred the palak rice for the variety. The veggies had access to aaloo-gobi roast, mix veg gravy and mushroom pepper dry in the side dishes and veg biryani in the rice section apart from the above mentioned palak rice, steamed rice, rasam and sambar. The aaloo-gobi roast was done well with the crispness of the batter and spices mixing in harmony. Overall, a sense of home cooked meal was what I gto from the place. Desserts were minimal - payasam (kheer) and a sweet kesari made out of ragi. The payasam was ok, not upto the standards expected in southern regions of India but the ragi dessert was novel and intense. It was cold and not too sugary and perfect to down after a spiced up meal.

My final opinion is that - its a fantastic place to get home cooked meals of Malnad cuisine. Meat lovers would rejoice at the sheer range and variety of dishes available to them but veggies need not despair (in our group 4 I was the only non-veggie) and the remaining 3 did not complain :-)

Location: 683/A 3rd Floor, 2nd Phase, JP Nagar, near Dalmiya Circle, Bangalore-76
Phone: 080-42083291
Cost: very affordable (meals cost around 250-300 per person)