A VISIT TO AVAREKAYI MELA @ FOOD STREET WITH #MyAsusZenFone

Its been a while .. since we last visited food streat at Bangalore.I am sure for any Banglorean this place is not new.Food Street also known locally as thindi bheedi / chat street is one of the Bangalore’s oldest street in VV Puram . It is a lane filled with mobile carts and small shops which serves some of the Karnataka’s best traditional cuisine,chaat, chinese and various other delicacies. It was after a gap of 5 years that we decided to visit this iconic street yet again and that too on a Sunday evening .

As said , we landed the food street last weekend around 8.00 PM and were in for a surprise. Oh man.. the street was so so crowded with long queues n crowd in front of each stall.The whole atmosphere was like that of a carnival with many vendors selling balloons, toys, masks, devil horns ,bags etc. My Mom who was visiting this place for the first time felt lost seeing the crowd. Then we remembered about the food festival “Avarekayi Mela ” happening at the end of the street. Well i am still not sure if it’s the regular weekend crowd or special crowd coz of the food festival .

Many food festivals happen in Bangalore but only a few are super duperhit and keep happening year after year. One such is Avarekalu mela at Food street , one of the hot favorite food festival among localites.I know many would be wondering what this ” Avarekalu ” is ?? Well in English its known as ” Hyacinth beans / field beans / flat beans / lima beans “, in tamil ” Mochai ” , In Gujarati ” Surti Papdi Lilva ” , in Marathi ” Vaal ” .This Avarekai Mela is organized by Sri Vasavi Condiments and many cooks dish out an array of dishes in which avarekalu is the hero. This festival is also a market for many farmers to sell their produce of avarekalu directly to us.

The blogger in me missed my camera badly. How i wished i had carried it and clicked pics of the street and yummy dishes to share with you all. Soon i remembered …. #MyAsusZenFone. I had heard great reviews about its camera and picture quality . It comes with 8MP PixelMaster Camera with Flash at the back whereas a 2MP front facing camera Various modes are offered on the Zenfone 5 like Time Rewind, HDR, Panorama, Night mode, Low Light Mode, Selfie, Beautification, Miniature mode, Depth of Field (Macro) Mode, Smart Remove, All Smiles and GIF Animation.

I was happy to see the low light mode and thought of giving it a try.Wow !! I was so happy with the quality of the image .I discovered pictures from the 8MP camera do excel in capturing excellent colors and as Asus claims, its PixelMaster technology does capture 400% more lights.Below are the pictures taken in low light mode… i am sure you too will like it.

This year it was 15th year of Avarekalu mela.Vasavi condiments menu list was filled with so many dishes made from Avarekalu like hitikbele saru,akki rotti,ragi rotti,paddu,avarekalu upma,avarekalu chitranna,savige bath,avarekalu payasa,avarekalu jilebi,avarekalu obattu,avarekalu gobi manchurian, avarekalu kati roll ,avarekalu kodubale,avarekalu nippattu,avarekalu mixture etc etc and etc…

If you are looking to sample traditional Karnataka dishes, its a good place.You get many varities at a single place.Most of them are prepared right in front of your eyes.

However , as per me not all the dishes were yummy and lacked the authenticity.Hitikbele saru was a total let down.Have decided to share its recipe with you all in my next post.

After tasting few dishes ,in avarekalu mela we headed towards other stalls to sample few more dishes.

The most favorite joint for us that day was Rajasthani Food Joint which had a very authentic taste and the most disappointing was corn chat centre .All the items there was priced exorbitantantly. For a baycorn all mixed bhel , the price was Rs 150 ….

If you are a big foodie and don’t care about hygiene ambience etc, then food street could be heaven for you . The food is cooked on the pavement and you can see your food getting cooked in front of you.

Though we enjoyed the food here but still feel its not really a great place to eat often es
pecially for people with kids. The place is so crowded that kids get pushed around and can turn crancky. Also the hygiene at this place is really low. People don’t have the common sense to throw the empty plates to the thrash . The street stincks big time instead of nice food aroma.Finally we left the place at around 10 and the street was still so crowded.