This story is from September 12, 2018

As Vijayawada grows, so does its cuisine choices

As Vijayawada grows, so does its cuisine choices
Vijayawada: As Vijayawada grows, and an increasingly diverse population makes the city on the banks of the River Krishna grows with it, varied cuisines appear to be finding takers, according to hospitality industry sources.
Apart from the presence of fast-service American restaurant chains like KFC, McDonalds and Burger King and traditional biryani outlets in the past 3 years, the city has seen the opening of food outlets offering other cuisine.

“We felt that Vijayawada was ready for Middle Eastern food, so we opened a restaurant offering mandi biryani,” said the owner of such an outlet on the Natarajan Gulzar Road near the Quality Inn DV Manor Hotel. The restaurant was opened last year, and has managed to build a loyal clientele among local residents. “Mandi” is a Yemeni dish made of rice, meat and spices.
In the past one year, 3 outlets offering the Yemeni dish have hung their shingles on Natarajan Gulzar Road.
Says the owner of several service apartments in Vijayawada: “Restaurants offering cuisine like the ‘mandi’ biryani that is seen as exotic in Vijayawada are struggling to stay in business because there are not enough customers, yet, for such cuisine. Vijayawada is a regular meat-and-potatoes kind of place, where the most successful eating places are those that offer traditional Andhra cuisines. It will take some time for different cuisines to become viable businesses for their owners.”

It is not as if the prospect of having the proposed capital city of Amaravati next door that has encouraged entrepreneurs to set up restaurants offering offbeat cuisines. Back in the eighties, the city played host to a pub offering beer-lunches and a discotheque. The two outlets were in a hotel owned by the Kandhari family of Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. The hotel subsequently changed hands, and the new owners decided to shut down the pub and discotheque.
Variety is not restricted to food alone in the city. It now appears to have become attractive to microbreweries as well, with a craft-beer chain opening its first outlet here earlier this year. “Craft beer is being increasingly favored by patrons in the major cities, so the owners of the microbrewery put probably thought the city needed one as well. I am told that the craft-beer pub has become popular in the six months it has set up shop here,” says the owner of a service apartment business quoted earlier.
While Vijayawada may eventually embrace cuisine that traces its roots to the Middle East, one particular cuisine may be long in the coming to the city: Japanese cuisine.
Says Tomohiro Nobuchi, a joint managing director of Mithra Kyokuto SPV Co Pvt Ltd., a manufacture of heavy engineering equipment, “Vijayawada is yet to have a restaurant offering Japanese cuisine. My colleagues from Japan and I have to fly to Bengaluru in Karnataka to enjoy food from Japan.”
“I wish a Japanese restaurant opens its doors in Vijayawada soon, so that expats from Japan like myself need no longer travel to either Bengaluru or Chennai to get a taste of sushi and other Japanese dishes,” Nobuchi says.
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