It’s got fiery bhoot jholakia chillies in the potato mix. That’s what makes the Deepika Padukone dosa at a restaurant called Dosa Labs in Austin, Texas, stand out from the crowd.
News about the Deepika dosa began doing the rounds of social media after a picture of the menu from the restaurant went viral on January 1. It turned out that the dosa isn’t the only dish that has been named after the actress. Within hours, a Twitter user shared a picture of a restaurant menu from Pune, featuring a parantha thaali named after her.
These dishes are only in the latest in line when it comes to edible items named after film personalities in India.
The Chicken Sanju Baba at Mumbai’s Noor Mohammadi Hotel is, perhaps, the most well known among these. The story goes that Sanjay Dutt was a regular patron at the 95-year-old restaurant. Dutt’s relationship with the restaurant’s owner, Khalid Hakim, began in 1986 when the actor was invited to cut the ribbon at the restaurant’s newly opened family section. Dutt gave them with the recipe of the dish, that went on to be called Chicken Sanju Baba.
When Dutt was released from prison after serving three years for illegally possessing arms in February, 2016, the restaurant served the dish free of cost for 12 hours.
There’s also the Chiru Dosa, named after Telugu actor Chiranjeevi. The Chiru Dosa is a fluffy, steamed dosa made without oil. Several recipes of the Chiru Dosa, which is said to have originated in Chiranjeevi’s home in Hyderabad, can be found online. In 2015, the actor’s son Ram Charan tried to patent the recipe.
Ram Charan told The Times of India that his father discovered the recipe more than 25 years ago at a small eatery near Mysore. Chiranjeevi, Ram Charan said, liked the dosas so much that he asked for the recipe.
Another example is the Om Puri Ka Mutton Saagwala served at the Mumbai restaurant, Urban Tadka, where the National Film Award-winning actor was a frequent customer and was reportedly fond of the mutton dish made with spinach.
In addition, Mumbai-based confectioner Milanda Jagtiani, who ran the now-closed Sante Delicatessen in Bandra, ended up naming her three-tier chocolate cake the “Bobby Cake” after the cake become a favourite with Bobby Deol and his family who could not stop ordering it.
Another variant in the films-inspires-food club involves dishes named after movie characters. Last year, a Mumbai lounge introduced a cocktail called Bholi Bhali Punjaban named after Richa Chadha’s gangster character Bholi Punjaban from the Fukrey (2013, 2017) series of films. The drink would come in a bottle with Bholi Punjaban’s image on it.
A similar instance is that of a resort in Oman introducing a cocktail called Shoaibtini which was the name of Akshay Kumar’s character in Once Upon A Time in Mumbai Dobaara! (2013). Kumar had reportedly shot scenes for the film in the resort which inspired the idea.
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