Double Post: Post No. 2- The Hungry Hills of Hyderabad

The Jubilee Hills/Banjara Hills crowd, I tell you, is a hungry lot, a very hungry lot. What puts apart the JH/BH crowd from the rest of us is that while in this part of the city everyone feel the hunger pangs twice or thrice a day, the JH/BH crowd is hungry round the clock. Of course, apart from being perpetually hungry they are also loaded, smart, sophisticated and not to mention, quite snobbish. But chiefly, they are always hungry and food seems to be their chief occupation next only to making money, of course. While they aren’t making money they are found to be eating, sometimes doing both simultaneously which isn’t easy for the likes of us but child’s play for the JH/BH crowd.

If you aren’t new to Hyderabad and also to this blog you will probably be aware by now that Jubilee Hills in an entirely different world from ours in several respects, beginning with money. While the air smells differently in the rest of the city, in Jubilee Hills it smells of money. Apart from this, JH is different in other respects too. While we have Chermas, CMR and the likes, Jubilee Hills has Satya Paul, Calvin Klein and even Ermenegildo Zegna. Then while we have Indira Park, Sanjeevaiah Park and other puny parks, Jubilee Hills has the vast KBR Park, which is actually a reserve forest. Then coming to automobiles while we have the likes of Saboo, Varun, Kun and so on, Jubilee Hills plays host to Jaguar, Audi, and Harley Davidson showrooms. Then on the jewellery front, while we have the Mangatrais and the like, it is Lladro, Swarovosky and other such international brands we may not have heard before. While we have the likes of Paradise and Bawarchi (which open a new branch roughly every two decades or so) they have new and big restaurants opening in the neighbourhood approximately every half hour which leads us to the main subject of this post.

Even as many Hyderabadis this side of the city are yet to overcome the tragedy of the collapse of ‘Citylights ’an Irani joint in Secunderabad, comes the news about the opening of yet another eatery in Jubilee Hills. On Monday I read a review in the Metro Plus of ‘Olive Bistro’ that seems to have opened on Road No 46, just a couple of weeks ago. This isn’t entirely surprising considering what I told you earlier above that the JH/BH crowd is a very hungry lot.

Sometime last month I read about the opening of another new restaurant in Madhapur which I remember as being a Bengali joint. Hardly a few days later I read about the opening of yet another new eatery by the name of Vasanta Bhavan where I am told they serve idlis and stuff like that. I do not know how far it is going to succeed because as far as I know the JH/BH crowd isn’t the idli-sambar eating sort like you and me. Here in this part of the city it is what most of us eat to get through life without further complicating it but in JH/BH it isn’t enough, on the grounds of style alone. It isn’t worth going in a Rs 2-3 crore Porsche/Jaguar from a Rs 25 crore mansion to some idli sambar joint. I do not think even their drivers will eat that stuff.