MADURAI: Madurai parotta never fails to be the talk of the town. Awareness campaigns and scrumptious parotta of the district seem to be inseparable. If it was mask parotta that created ripples last year, it is now time for manjappai parotta.
Aimed at popularising the 'Meendum Manjappai' scheme launched by the Chief Minister MK Stalin, the third-generation owners of a 60-year-old hotel came up with a quirky idea to replicate manjappai shape on parottas.
Started as a small idly shop at Alagaradi near Madura Coats by the grandfather K Subbu, the hotel now has four other branches managed by the brothers N Navaneethan (48) and N Gunasekaran (29).
Sharing insights, Gunasekaran told TNIE, "The scheme launched to revive the use of traditional manjappai (yellow cloth bags) is a move welcomed by many, and we wanted to do our bit in popularising it."
"At first, we had decided to hand out free cloth bags for 15 days at our home branch in Alagaradi. It was then we came up with the idea of making manjappai parotta. Though he found it funny our parotta master Thangaraj picked it up soon. Least did we expect that the idea, which we laughed off as a joke, would receive such an overwhelming response," he added.
A piece of manjappai parotta costs `20 using two balls of dough. The manjappai parotta was launched at the Alagaradi branch on Monday and is available for dine-in and takeaway from 12.30 pm to 9.30 pm.
"With the incredible response from the public who voluntarily ask for the cloth bags, we feel we have now been entrusted with greater responsibility. We have been taking steps to ensure that plastic bags are not used on our premises," the younger sibling mentioned.
Picking up the trend, Hotel Temple City that introduced mask parotta last year has now launched manjappai parotta.