GADAG: The first question many customers ask when they enter savaji (non-vegetarian) restaurants is: ‘Do you serve onions with the meal?’ With the answer often being ‘no’, because of the skyrocketing prices, such restaurants are now seeing a drastic fall intheir business.
Savaji restaurants -- there are quite a few of them in Gadag and Betageri areas -- are known for their typical delicacies made of coconut and masala. Spicy mutton, chicken and egg thalis are served with jowar rotis, both soft and hard. But onion is such an integral part of savaji food that a meal is incomplete without it. But as onions have turned too pricey, restaurants have stopped serving them or reduced their quantity.
Manjunath Doni, a villager of Sambhapur said, “We come to Gadag for special savaji thalis. We need onions even for normal roti and curry. We cannot even imagine a chicken or mutton curry without onions”.
Ramu Swagat, owner of Swagat Hotel in Betageri said, “Onions have shaken governments... We know that onion is a must. Customers fight with us for at least two or three slices. If we give two, they ask for four to six and it does not work out for us”.