Food @ ILP

People have major concern about the food when going to a new place. Every state in India has got a different style of food. In North, people eat more wheat, whereas in South, the intake of rice is more. My experience about food was not that great. But I’d like to share few points which can throw some light on this tasty topic.

Let me start from the breakfast. Everyday you have your breakfast in the training centre premises. Let me tell you that you need to pay for this. TCS provides it at subsidized rates. You get Idli Sambar, Bread Omlet, Puri Bhaji, Uttapam, Pesarattu, Tomato Bath, Maisore Bhajji, Pongal and some other stuff (I don’t remember all). Pesarattu was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever eaten (Sorry South-Indian friends, but personally I didn’t like it). Apart from this, you get fresh fruit juices and milk shakes like Mosambi juice, Pineapple juice, Watermelon juice, grape juice, mixed-fruit juice, banana milk shake etc. at Rs.10/- per glass. You have to get coupons for all this. You cannot exchange food coupons for juice and vice versa. You can also have tea/coffee any time of the day (coffee vending machine is available 24 hrs a day; the only constraint is availability of the cups :))

Some of the information about the food here can be specific to Hyderabad; but at all other ILP locations the picture is fairly similar.

You have an hour’s break for the lunch. We had to buy food coupons for Rs.23/- everyday (what an odd figure, I was frustrated to get those 3 rupees change everyday). Lunch was good. It contained roti, sabji, rice, dal, curd and some papad like stuff (we used to call it “Ponga Pandit”; don’t ask me why…). We required lots of efforts for eating those rotis. (They should have provided us with an axe along with the roti ;-)). Let me tell you that there is neither A.C. nor fans in the canteen. Most of the people (including me) preferred sitting outside on the rocks in the premises. (Note: “On the rocks” has a literal meaning here)

I must mention here about the evening snacks we used to have. In Madhapur (a place at 20 mins distance from our hotel), we used to go for having tea/coffee and some snacks. We found out a small hotel where we got delicious hot Bhajiya, Maisoor Bonda (a kind of Bhajiya only) and other good stuff. People going to Hyderabad for their ILP would like to go to this place. It’s opposite Madhapur petrol pump.

If you ask me about the dinner, you are free to have it anywhere you wish. You can have your dinner at hotel or you may hunt for good restaurants of your taste. I used to take my dinner in the hotel itself. First 3-4 days I went outside in the search of a good place for North Indian food, but alas! I ended up getting only rice, rice and rice. (Well, I don’t hate rice, but “only rice and no roti” brought me to the decision of having dinner at hotel). Hotel dinner was a bit better than eating only rice outside. But there also the problem was not over. The dinner contents used to be the same everyday. You can imagine consuming the same thing with same taste everyday without any variety. For a change, you can go out to a restaurant. In Hyderabad, there are nice restaurants around. Few of them are Angeethi, Keshav Reddy, Amaravati, Olive Garden, Ginger Court, Paradise, Panjab ki Rasoi, Hyderabad House, Chilly-Pepper, Chutney’s and many more. Well, you could have visualized our hunt for the food by now. Amongst all these, I personally recommend Angeethi. It’s a nice Panjabi restaurant with very eye-catching ambience. Service and food, both are good. Prices are affordable and they have buffet system, except for Sundays. Paradise and Hyderabad House are good for Hyderabadi Biryani. Chutney’s is an exceptional South Indian restaurant with scrumptious food.

Well, after so much writing about food, I’m feeling quite hungry :-) I’ll take a break here and wish you all very happy days for your taste buds during ILP.