Govind Ki Bandi - HYD

First, a huge thanks to Vasu aka Vasudev Singh who woke up early in the morning insisting and taking me to try Govind ki Bandi and taking these awesome photos!

A restaurant - big or small - is a FTW for me when they prepare their food with love and dedication and serve their best efforts on the table. They follow the rules set for preparing the dish or create their own better rules to make the dish more enticing. Govind Dosa is one such place. The food here is made with love with no holding back on the amount of good ingredients used to cook and the result is yum!

Govind Dosa is yet another small but popular breakfast cart nestled in one of Old City's bylanes, dishing out tasty breakfast items to early risers. Very easy to access once you reach Char Minar (well at-least it's a straight forward direction with no risk of getting lost in the by lanes of Old City), this is a one cart business which serves South Indian breakfast. Mr.Govind is the owner of the business and barring 3 assistants who sometimes help out with the bulk orders, does all the cooking himself. He's been in the business for 27 years and also owns a small snacks store which opens after he is done serving amazing breakfast to his customers. Let's try out his food!

Let me introduce you to his secret ingredient - wholesome, no calorie comprise, tasty yellow butter. And he doesn't hold back on using it generously on his dishes. Every dish made on his tawa has a cube of that yellow wonder. So if you count calories, forget about it for 2 hours while you savour the buttery goodness! 

His two other main additions to all his dishes is this spice blend which includes red chilli powder, turmeric,coriander power, cumin powder and a herb blend of coriander,mint and curry leaves and green chillies. The combination of the spices, herbs and butter - henceforth called The Blend - works perfectly well together.

We started off with the tawa idli. He has the usual plain idlis and vadas, but I would recommend skipping the plain ones for his tawa versions. It starts with sautéing onions, tomatoes and The Blend. Once the spices have mixed well together, the idlis are introduced to it. He ensures every idli piece has been covered by The Blend and then roasts the spiced idlis for a minute or 2, flips them and then serves them hot on a leaf plate. This is a tasty dish but it also depends on how much chutney/sambar/spice you like on idlis. I like dunking them in chutney or sambar or covering fully with chutney podi. So with this dish, I didn't wanna spoil the spice taste on the idli with the coconut chutney but without it the idlis were dry. But I enjoyed it nonetheless.

This was my favourite part of the meal: tawa vada! Crisp vadas cooked the same way as the tawa idlis but the vadas combined beautifully with The Blend, better than the idlis. I didn't even need the coconut chutney with it. I could eat multiple plates of this. Grease makes all the difference - in this case, fried vadas with buttered spices!

Coming to dosa - his primary breakfast dish. Govind dosa is the typical Hyderabadi street dosa one finds a lot which has rava upma added to the usual dosa. It doesn't make the dosa crispy but adds a good texture to it. He starts by spreading the dosa batter into a neat, thin circle and pours oil on it so that it doesn't stick to the tawa. Then comes the rava upma with the spice blend. He spreads it evenly over the dosa and lets it cook a while. Then comes the magical herb blend, tomatoes, onions and a cube of butter. Once the veggies have cooked he spread the mixture evenly around the dosa. This is left to cook for 2-3 minutes. 

Two things are amazing about the dosa: If you see the picture on the right that's two layers of yum - the dosa and the upma+The Blend layer; and how the thin dosa never burns having been on the tawa for at-least 5 minutes on medium-high heat.

Once the dosa starts coming off the tawa around the edges, he removes the dosa and serves it folded with the coconut chutney and potato bhaji if requested. And this he does 4 dosas at a time.   

The dosa is wonderful by itself. The two layers of the dosa and the upma merge beautifully so much so that if you hadn't watched him make it you wouldn't realise he added a layer of upma. The Blend as always works its charm. In fact, it works better with the dosa than the vadas.

I've definitely had crispier dosas made the same way in Old City. But The Blend helps Govind Dosa win the taste contest.

Towards the end of our breakfast, he was making something he called the spot idli. It's basically idli batter poured thickly on the spice, herb and butter mix on the tawa and left to cook covered. Once the batter is cooked, he flips them and cooks them for 2-3 minutes. They are served with coconut chutney. They're fluffy and taste a lot like uttappam. A tasty buttery tomato onion uttappam! 

Round off the butter-laden breakfast with some cutting chai! (I love the picture too!)

Mr. Govind who made the wonderful food and Mr. Vasu who clicked the beautiful pictures! Talented people who look alike! 

Govind Ki Dosa
Cost for 2: Rs.160
Taste: 8.5/10 - dosa could have been crispier
Service: 9/10 - Quick and friendly
Ambience: 6/10 - It has a nice old city charm around.