Here, Roadside Stalls Provide Healthy Options
Stall-owner Rohini Budhakar and Son Deepak
So, 60-year-old Rohini Budhakar who runs a small restaurant in Karmala, with son Deepak, makes sure that each time a customer visits her hotel, the food served is prepared fresh. She also takes care of the raw materials used so that customers get safe and tasty food also at an affordable cost.
In interiors of Maharashtra, there are certain pockets where improved economic conditions have led to the inundation of ‘fast food’ outlets. This, in turn, has drastically changed eating habits of the locals. Several zones in Solapur district has seen a rise in Chinese food stalls, cold drink and beverage outlets, etc.
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| Rohini Budhakar with son Deepak preparing fresh food for their customers |
“In most places, people use maida (refined wheat flour) to make puri but I make puri with aata (wheat flour) even if it takes much longer to prepare. My customers, too, are patient as they know what I’m doing is good for their health,” says Rohini. She also takes special care in serving the food. “If a customer tells me he wants non-spicy food, I serve him the curry accordingly.”
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| Rohini's food stall |
Not just that, she doesn’t store any food item especially ‘fried’ items such as batata vada, bhajji, etc. “When we get an order, only then does my mother or I prepare the vada or the bhajji. These items are high in demand and in most places, people prepare and keep batata vada, etc. But my mother doesn’t do so,” says Deepak as he helps his mother with the customers at the hotel started by his grandfather decades ago.
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| Arjun Mane enjoying the delicious and healthy food |
As local Arjun Mane says, “I love eating here… be it puri bhaji or batata vada. Maushi makes the best that’s available.”
This is part of media-legal think-tank DraftCraft International's The Food Report - Jan 2023 (Maharashtra) that was generated as part of The Public Health Project.
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