Hi all Local Guides. Being foodies and Local Guide enthusiasts, my wife and I went on a Food Tour of my city, Trivandrum, to get a bird’s eye view of how businesses are doing after the wake of the COVID lockdown. The mission also aimed at helping up some of the little guys and to promote some ongoing business through my instagram page and the local guides connect group. We selected a loop around the vazhuthacaud area for my tour of the day. We planned out a full-day itinerary starting from pre-lunch to an early dinner.
Firstly, it was pre-lunch and we started out with SALAD-CAFFE. An outlet exclusively for Salads in Trivandrum, SALADCAFFE serves some exceptionally tailored, as well as continentally borrowed, salads. The mixture is mostly composed of baked meat, boiled eggs, and raw vegetables stirred with assorted herbs and spices. I tried their CAESAR SALAD and was delicious. Finally, some healthy-diet amidst all the junk in the city was a real relief. Their instagram page boasts of their personalized salads for different kinds of diets and regimes. Their menu is very elaborate and would take a day to read through about all the compositions of each miscellany and categories.
The outlet is a home-run takeaway venture along the Cotton-Hills Road in Vazhuthacaud Area. Not much for looks, the outlet is a usual meekly-maintained residence. All that barely stands out is their neon Symbol and name board, and that too is hardly visible from the road. But tucked within is a great kitchen that serves some hale and hearty recipes. I encourage all local guides to try out some healthy eating from the outlet.
It was time for lunching. We marched into KAFFEEHAUS for a touch of Continental. The SEAFOOD RISOTTO was scrumptious. Kaffeehaus is within the hushed neighbourhood next-door to vazhuthacaud.
They’ve got all the European delicacies- spaghetti, pasta, pizza, salad… and some dishes which would be unheard of, like the Rosti, crostini and risotto. Ive tried their CHICKEN ROSTI before and it is a chunk of potato mashed with the selected veggies or meat. The PASTA AGLIO E OLIO was delicious too. Quietened within the suburb, the outlet is seldom known to our local guides. It is a great continental try-out for all who haven’t heard of it.
We took a pause for a while for the continental meal to settle down, and then headed for dessert. I-FRUIT at Thycaud flaunts their live ice cream as the gig. The freezer-pan machine is used to beat up some interesting flavours on order. The Ice cream rolls are delicious. We tried a few of those, and were really tasty. It’s nice to see the boys mashing up the fruits and milk on the freezer pan and rolling them up into the dessert. The waffles were a really hard crumb to chew, but tasty, all the same. I tried the coffee-caramel waffle and it was delicious, but a difficult bite.
I-FRUIT is a newly started venture just at the dawn of the COVID lockdown period and unfortunately they had to go through the trying times to survive. But still standing strong, the entrepreneur seems to be a happy-go-lucky person. She claims that all her recipes have been experimented and perfected by herself to deliver the right taste. Everything on the menu is her improvised recipes. The tiny outlet has a brim-full seating capacity of 15 people and serves sandwiches and burgers too.
A pause again, and It was almost late evening, and we opted for our early dinner. CAFÉ SARWAA was a total surprise- an ethnic-themed café hushed within the vicinities of vazhuthacaud. The rustic ambience they’ve shaped up is a real charmer amid all the modernity. The storefront called SARWAA is a sale counter for all tribal and antique goods. But the backyard of the business is their classy, yet folkloric, eatery. The ingenious use of bamboo and thatch in the roof, coir and wood in the furniture, a miniature vintage fountain in the petite open yard, the foliage-covered sidelines and all the indigenous festoons really perked up the ambience. The vernacular of the construction created an ambient cooling within the semi-open café. Ordering a schnitzel and staying for hours with laptops and fiction books is the general practice of youths who frequent the café. Their menu doesn’t present anything unique, but whatever is jotted down is prepared with great care from the kitchen within as if like a home-run business.
Sandwiches, salads, snacks, quesedillas, crepes, waffles, pancakes, noodles, dessert and tea are up for grabs. I presume this would create an awareness amongst our local guide community. We ordered their shredded beef sandwich and hot chocolate. Both were delightful, but having it in the countryside ambience added a few more mental point, making the final rating excellent.
Our final stop was for a digestive tea. We walked into ZAFRAN- THE EATERIA, a small tea-shop which too was inaugurated during the lockdown days. The novel tea-shop had some interesting Malabar bites and beverages. We tried their Attipathiri (not the same as chattipathiri) and kinnathappam. Lime-tea along with the munchies was a great climax to our day.
We called it a night and headed back home. I hope this renders a mental image to our local guides on how business in Trivandrum have been dragging across to survive the pandemic, and a little push would go a long way in helping them rise up. I encourage all our local guides to do something similar in giving the PUSH. After all, it’s our moral duty as Local Guides.
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