FINE DINE THATTUKADA

Na: Hey Shish, You have a long distance call.

Sh: Who is it? It must be for you.

Na: No, it is for you. It is some interior decorator.

Sh: (taking the phone) hello, who is this?

Long Distance Caller: Am I talking to the owner of new restaurant in NA?

Sh: Yes. But who is on the line?

LDC: I am an interior decorator. I want to give you a proposal to do the interior decoration of the new restaurant.

Sh: I do not want any decoration, interior or exterior. And mine is not a restaurant. It is a Thattukada. A thattukada is never decorated.

LDC: This shows how ignorant you are on modern trends. A good atmosphere, a good ambience, pleasant surroundings and a number of other things can help attract more and more customers.

Sh: I think those excellent delicious dosas and the aroma of those freshly fried ‘parippu vadas’ are enough to attract enough customers.

LDC: I will anyway send the proposal. Just go through it and you will change your mind.

Sh: Tell me one thing. Have you done any interior decoration of a restaurant before?

LDC: I will send you photographs of some of the works that we had done. Like ‘Ricefield Eating House’, at the far end of our town. We have given the place a feeling and when you enter the restaurant, you will feel that you are in aricefield. Idea is not our own. Years back, when I was very young, I had gone to a place called ‘bullock cart restaurant’. When you sit in the restaurant, you feel you are in a bullock cart.

Sh: Then I should name my Thattukada ‘Rolls Royce’….  Any other work you have done? 

LDC: In the next town, we have worked to decorate ‘Mother’s Kitchen’. Virtually you will feel that you are in an old kitchen with soot-blackened walls and…..

Sh: If you really want to take the trouble of sending the proposal, do. But…. (the line gets disconnected)

Na: Don’t say no to these ideas. Sometimes it is required. See people do these things after making lot of studies of customer behavior pattern etc.

Sh: See, actually a thattukada is usually an outdoor affair on the roadside. Forget the decoration part, where does the interior come in? Usually they have wooden benches for sitting and still higher wooden benches  or desks to keep the food plate while eating. The problem in this arrangement is some amount of dust also gets consumed with the dosas which I want to avoid.

Na: So, what are you going to do?

Sh: I will take into a room.

Na: Well, there comes the interior.

Sh: If the interior wants to look like a Thattukada, I don’t need a professional decorator. I will have similar benches and desks inside. I will have a petromax light – or better still, lights looking like petromax, but actually, inside will be LEDs. Or a lamp looking like a kerosene lantern, but actually with LED lamp inside.

Na: You can do a few things like that. You can darken the wall a bit to enhance the effect. The walls will look dirty, but they won’t be actually dirty.

Sh: No, no. If you think the walls are dirty, you won’t go to eat there. Anyway these are all for arguments’ sake. I am just going to start it with dosas first and I will promise delicious dosas cheaply – I don’t like that word cheap; people have made that word itself cheap. Let us say economically – to everyone. I won’t delay it by discussing many options with many people.

Na: But you can properly, professionally decorate the place, no? You can actually tell the decorator what exactly you want and they will design it properly. There are very good professionals who will be ready to do it.

Sh: But you will have to pay a hefty sum, no? And charge it to the customer by increasing price of dosas? Then the whole concept changes, no? Then it will become a Fine Dine Thattukada....

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