Nirmalas Kitchen

If you come down Shankarnag Road in Kottigere, you will find us at No.5, Krishna Chooda Nilaya. We are quite close to Srinivas Motors, which is usually how people find their way here. Nirmalas Kitchen isn't a big restaurant or anything like that. It’s more of a home-style setup where we do all our cooking and prep work. The smell of spices and tempering is usually the first thing you notice when you walk in. We start early, usually while it’s still dark outside, to get the morning batches ready. The kitchen is always warm because the stoves are running for hours. We have a few big stainless steel counters and lots of heavy pots. It’s mostly family helping out. My sister handles the vegetables and I look after the main cooking. We don't really have a printed menu or a fancy sign outside. It’s just a simple place where we make food like we would at home. Sometimes the delivery boys are waiting by the door and it gets a bit crowded in the narrow passage. Bannerghatta is growing so fast, and there are new buildings coming up everywhere, but we’ve stayed right here in this house. It’s a lot of hard work, standing on your feet all day, and our hands always smell like onions or garlic. But we’ve gotten used to the rhythm of it. It’s just our daily life at the kitchen and we keep at it.