Best Damn Breakfast in Manipal

"Are you sick of Sushi King yet? Yes leh? Dont worry, being as understanding as I am, I am not gonna write about Sushi King today. Today we talk about Genji, okay?" *showing evil grin to s3nw4i*

Rabbit, in her Genji @ PJ Hilton Post

I subscribe to about 20 blogs, and I found that the frequency of bloggers writing food review posts was such that every single day, there is at least one food post for me to read (while simultaneously beating my head on my desk in jealous agony). I’m an enormous¹ foodie, and the first month I was back here in Manipal had been particularly trying with all these vivid, gazillion-megapixel-photographs of fine dining taunting my healthy, healthy appetite.

There was Su Ann of quaintly.net’s post on Hajime that damn near made me want to board the next flight to Japan, Mitch Chin’s double threat of Sheraton Imperial’s Botanical Coffee House and (also) Hajime posts back-to-back, Rabbit’s Genji, tong-sui and some-chinese-restaurant-that-also-serve-papadoms posts, Jen’s all-about-ribs post, Shi Han's all-Malaysian-goody-line-up post and also miscellaneous here-and-theres on many, many different blogs that I cannot find the strength to locate and mention. Everytime I see a post about food, I take it personally and go; "How on earth I’m going to survive the next one-and-a-half-years here in India? OMGWTFBBQKLCC!"

Okay, calm down, k0k. Remember that your blood pressure is higher than your 60-year-old Dad’s².

Well, you know what they always say? If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em. So welcome, Dear Readers to the first of k0k bl0k’s Manipal Epicurean Reviews;

The Sweet Bun Place

Luckily, no one noticed my photographing the place, or they’d go all “Crazy Chinese tourist!” on me.

Here’s a rarely-visited spot for most Malaysian prisoners students of Manipal, though many had no doubt seen it when they go the post-office monthly to pick up the Maggi Mee ration their parents send them. It’s located right across the main street from the post office and in front of the police station (formerly the Nehru Memorial Library). Easy enough directives? No need for a map, I trust? Good, because I’m fresh out of crayons.

The Sweet Bun Boss (Oh damn, I couldn’t stop laughing when I wrote this caption).

Now for a bit of history;

The Sweet Bun Place started initially as a wooden push-cart, which is still there as you can see in the picture above (look real careful-like and you can spot a wheel bottom left). One day, the Sweet Bun Boss (haha) got tired of pushing his little cart around and decided to erect a dilapidated wooden shack around it. So here it’s rooted, till today.

And do you know why it’s called the Sweet Bun Place?

Here’s why; 70 years ago, a pair of lovers shared a sweet bun right on this spot right before they parted because the girl’s family was moving to Kerala. But they promised each other that they’d meet here again a decade later and get married. So, true to his words, the man came back to this spot ten years later to wait for his bride-to-be, which didn’t turn up. He waited three nights and three days before dying of dysenteric bloody diarrhoea due to a Shigella infection he contracted from a sweet bun he consumed while waiting. And henceforth, this place was always known as the Sweet Bun Place to commemorate the undying romance and unhygie…

Okay, that’s a crock-load of cock. It’s actually called that because it has no name and I went there for the first time after my ex-roomie told me that their sweet buns kick ass. If my maiden visit was to try their idli, it might have easily been dubbed the 'Idli Place' instead. Or 'Poori Place'. Or 'Parota Place' – well, you get my drift.

Authentic Indian dining experience.

Like most of the food posts I read, there is usually some description offered about the eatery’s furnishings, décor, atmosphere, so I’ll stick with the format;

First thing you’ll notice about this place is that almost everything is painted blue; the benches, tables, the now-immobile push-cart – all of them were coordinated in the same sky blue to create a serene ambience that is both pleasing to the eye and calming to the soul. Even the canvas awning was blue, so the birds flying overhead can enjoy it too.

Another thing you’ll notice immediately is that the sitting and dining fixtures were all authentic, hand-made pieces – all lovingly built by the Sweet Bun Boss himself. And in reflection of his rebellious, chaotic sense of artistry, no two benches or tables in this establishment are made exactly the same.

It’s either that or he could not afford a measuring tape.

The communal urn.

Aside from his modern views on art, the Sweet Bun Boss is also a practical minimalist. On every table, you’ll find a stainless steel urn about 15 inches tall which serves a dual function as a receptacle of drinking water and as a dispenser of hand-washing water. In the course of their meals, strangers dining on the same table will take turns(!) drinking straight from the urn (a quaint custom which I had declined to partake). And upon completion of eating, they would pour the urn’s content onto their hands for the purpose of cleansing their fingers.

Ick.

The kitchen area.

And don’t you just love to have your food prepared right in front of you?

I particularly like the way the chef bitch-slap the sweet bun dough. Such emotion. Such majestic power…

Sweet bun and coffee.

Behold the golden-brown, crispy exterior of a sweet bun – a snack of popular repute in small town Manipal (and probably the rest of India too for all I know). Nothing shakes oneself out of the morning doldrums like the satisfaction of breaking a hot, fresh sweet bun into two and releasing a cloud of fragrant steam from its white, hollow interior. It tastes good on its own, having a crunchy texture and sweet taste, but some prefer to dip theirs into coffee or tea to soak up the goodness of the beverages before consumption. Whichever way you like it, it’s superb nonetheless.

If you think sweet buns are those soggy, limp, cold crap they sell behind the Dissection Hall Building every morning, you have obviously never tasted the ones they serve in the Sweet Bun Place. Hey, the place is called that for a reason, y’know?

And notice the funny, extra-deep saucer in which the stainless steel cup of coffee stood? You’re suppose to pour the cup’s content into the saucer and sip from it. How rad is that? – your very own teh-tarik set!

Poori and some special sauce/whatever they serve with it.

However, my favourite dish here is their poori; a fluffy, paper-thin, unleavened bread made from whole-grain durum wheat flour with water and salt, and deep fried in vegetable oil (though the dish itself is not at all greasy). They are like little balloons filled with hot air, and I daresay if you drop one, it’ll probably float slowly to the ground. It’s usually served with dal (lentils) or bhaji (a simple vegetable curry that contains onions) but at the Sweet Bun Place, they’ll give you a small bowl of special sauce/whatever to go with it.

Personally, I prefer the special sauce/whatever they serve at the Sweet Bun Place over dal or bhaji. It’s a savoury stuff containing little chewable tomato cubes that lend the mixture a hint of sweetness which I like very much. The conventional way of eating poori is to tear little pieces of it and use them to scoop up the tomato bits (or dal or bhaji; whichever the case may be). I’d ask for a couple of spoons usually, and the Sweet Bun Boss now knew me well enough to give me the cutleries whenever I come without my asking.

The absolute kicker³ of this place is its price. The whole meal; sweet bun + poori set + coffee cost me only 13 rupees. That’s like 1 ringgit for a perfectly wholesome and delicious breakfast. Beat that!

Anyway, if you’re new in Manipal, the Sweet Bun Place is definitely not the best of places to go for eats. You’ll need to start off with the less 'adventurous' eating places to build up your body's immune system first or – well – you’ll end up like dysenteric-bloody-diarrhoea-lover-boy I talked about earlier.


The connoisseur,
k0k s3n w4i

¹ Not in its literal sense, of course.
² Yes. True. Sadly - and my dad will not let me forget that.
³ Boy, I just love this word.