A pointless rant after yet another boring lunch at a crowded Darshini. More fast food bitching, but this time we go local.

Darshinis. You can find them in almost every single road in Bangalore. You pay first, get a token, go to the counter and get your food freshly prepared in no time. There are standing-round-tables on which you keep your plate(s), eat the food in 5 minutes and carry on with the rest of your day. You can fill up your stomach pretty decently with about 20 rupees and spend nothing more than 20 minutes on the whole process. Plus these guys have expanded their menu to include various kinds of meals, north indian food, fast food like Bhel Puri, Pani Puri, Samosa, Pav Bhaji etc., and to top it all you even get Chinese food, fresh juices and ice creams here. So there's definitely a lot to choose from. These guys are like Microsoft or Reliance. They want to be in every market.

A little history here especially for the people not so familiar with this. Back then, you had the Kamats and a select others from the Udupi area in Karnataka running a couple of restaurants at the most. Outside the Deccan plateau, South Indian food basically still means what these guys have traditionally served. ie., Vegetarian food from the Udupi area. What started then as Kamats, Shanti Sagars and Shiv Sagars with presence in a few places across Karnataka and in pockets in the North (When we say North on this site we generally mean Maharashtra and above). It's still the case everywhere except Bangalore.

It's convenient, quick, easy and reliable. This city has its share of popular burger joints but they're only for luxury-eating and are generally among choices when people want to EAT OUT. Not in the regular sense of Fast Food really. Plus you've got to shell out 100 rupees to be full. Anyone can afford to eat at darshinis. Maybe not anyone, because there's still going to be month-ends when you're going to go to the nearest mallu/iyengar bakery to spend your last 10 rupees on a cigarette, an egg puff, a couple of bananas and maybe a chai if you just found some more change in one of your pockets.

I'll be the first to admit it. I eat at darshinis pretty frequently. I don't like to. I actually fucking love eating dosas but not what they make at these places and I totally loathe their sweetened sambhar too. Ok, the coffee is pretty alright. What about the rest of the menu? Meals, you say? You get both South Indian Meals, (Probably the term they came up with to differentiate it from their other meals, the) North Indian Meals. They both suck. North Indian meals even comes with a shitty tomato soup and curd rice. Did you read the curd rice part in the fucking North Indian meal? Hello? North Indians eat Rajma and Dal Chawal for meals lolzz. With South Indian meals they serve the most generic and bland vegetables possible (invariably those Beans). Except Pav Bhaji, the chaat items like Bhel Puri are totally localized, so don't even try it. Chinese is of course the worst shit in the menu.