Weekend mornings are the best when they start at around 9 a.m. Or so I thought. Well!! I was (luckily) proven wrong! All thanks to Lincy 
An early morning (well, not too early, but early enough), a neatly maintained park, with a huge clear pool of water, AND on top of all these, drizzles that reach the earth at a regular pace, with no sign of the sun being out, with the hustle and bustle of Bangalore actually at your eyesight and despite that you are still safely away from its unwelcome impacts. That was Sankey park for you.
While the Adigas’ in 18th Cross, Malleswaram was already swarming with its loyal foodie fans from Malleswaram, quite close to it, was this clandestine, yet popular Sankey that I am talking about. It was definitely one of the most beautiful areas where you might want to witness a morning, with all its beauty. Simple, clean, this place easily accommodates all those morning walkers. And the best part about this place – the ‘Don’t Cut Me’ placards around trees that were saving the last remains of greenery in Bangalore, and the little kids who prefer mere running around to real jogging. (You should have seen this little kid in the black sweaters that day! Trying to resist his temptation to sway his hands around, forcing himself to keep his little fists close to his chest, trying real hard to take measured fast paces as against the teeter-totter that he was used to. He looked fettered while his brother taught him real jogging. Kids are a bliss to watch !! But curbing their ‘freedom’ – that part is not ) 2 hours of walk should be real easy there since, the pavement is also well maintained, and it’s really comfortable. And to add to it, there are these little kids to old uncles who ‘gossip’ (Ha… They do all the gossiping and end up blaming women! Phew! Talk about gender discrimination!!)
All rightey!! I give up ! It’s difficult to harness all of nature’s beauty into words. So go ahead and check out Sankey for yourself ! But I can give a shot to the man-made ones. And that precisely is what I am going to do now. Well! That was partly a reason, why I wanted to walk in Sankey that morning. Given that it was in Malleswaram, I thought it was high time, I tried the much-hyped CTR Benne Masal Dosa.
I had no clue as to where it was. Nor did Lincy. We ended up asking one of the gate-keepers of Sankey. And according to him, it was a ‘Go straight and then turn left’ (That folks, is the Desi equivalent of ‘I don’t know’ 
) But he assured us that that was the route and we had no choice but to believe him. By the way, the location of CTR was not the only thing that I was clueless about. What the hell was ‘benne’? I could only try the simple translation trick that I knew for almost a year.
StringBuffer tamilEquiv = someKannadaWord;
tamilEquiv.replace(‘b’,’v’);
return tamilEquiv;
Venne? Butter? Definitely! Maybe!! But hey ! Apparently I turned out to be right! As I got to know from Lincy later on, it was indeed butter.
Oh k!! So where was I ? Outside Sankey Tank. No seriously. Watchman number two did not have a clue either.I tried expanding CTR on Lincy’s suggestion. Much to our dismay, all we got back was a , ‘Tiffin bekha?? Illi ondhu idhi. Alli ondhu idhi!!’ Yeah! Right! And we went about asking an English speaking, Kannadiga guy for the directions. (Updated on request: Yes! The guy was good-looking)Yo! We got the right route this time.
After walking past few crosses, few ‘mundhe hogi’s, and one (close to) haunted houses, was the ‘Eureka’ moment awaiting us. CTR, aka Shri Sagar What welcomed me was a bunch of what Vivek would call ‘jilebiya puzhinju potta mathiri’ matters Like it matters ! I already knew, what I had to order. So there goes.. Benne masal dosa ondhu, coffee ondhu.
Now! Be warned! If you are looking for ambience, soothing instrumentals in the background, buffet, feedback forms, four-wheeler parking and finger bowls, CTR is definitely not what you want. Oops! Are you this simple guy who goes to a restaurant to taste something edible? Then you are in
It has just been renewed to accommodate more customers. The waiters are friendly and they don’t address you , ‘Sir’, ‘Mayym’, or ‘Madam-Sir’. But those are just about the restaurant. Not about their ‘creation’
After a 5 minute wait came our precious benne masal dosa. Wait! Aren’t the one in restaurants supposed to be bigger?? What is this? My mom’s dosas are of the same size. My dosas are of the same size. -2 points from 0 
Mummy! I want bigger dosas.
But the cribbing hardly lasted. One gulp of the dosa and I was mouthshut. Awryt! A typical Chennai foodie, who is so used to Saravana Bhavan will still want to claim that the sambhar was sweet and the masal had some excess garlic. No it did not! Such claims will be made by people who eat the dosa and masal separately. Take a piece of the dosa, with the masal AND the benne on top of it, it is just perfect. As good as my mom’s dosas. The plain dosa as such was really good. And as I looked around, all dosas were the same size blended with the same content and for the first time, I saw these Malleswaram foodies in action. There are people who claim that it gets much more attention than it deserves. That I dunno. But I am yet to hear someone say that the dosa is NOT good. Few gulps and I was done. Watte breakfast. And I was specifically asked to have some coffee after that. Now I am no particular fan of this bitter drug, but still, it perfectly complimented the excessively good taste of this CTR special dish.
No wonder it survives around 45 years as almost an uncrowned champion of dosas in Blore. While we walked down, there was one board that said, “Ice-creams and juices coming soon”. But somehow, by now, I am sure as hell that the one particular dish that would be in constant demand would be the one that was not advertised anywhere in CTR – the one that I had just then.
P.S. : I did make a promise – to blog about this Benne Masal Dosa, before the taste fades away from my tongue. Apparently, I had kept up with that part of the promise
