MTR@100: Three cheers for rava idli, chandrahara and countless happy customers 

Home to a million memories, Mavalli Tiffin Room, or MTR as it is fondly called, is celebrating 100 years of service in 2024. The landmark building on Lalbagh Road at Mavalli has served lakhs of customers its iconic rava idlis, masala doses, badam halwa, and chandrahara, among other delicacies, since 1924.

“Decades ago, our cousin gang had the ritual of visiting Lalbagh every Sunday. An equally important ritual was to come to MTR restaurant for breakfast. If our parents could not spot us in Lalbagh, then they knew we would be in MTR. Their masala dose has remained my favourite through the years,” said Savitha Rajesh, an ardent fan of the famed restaurant, going down memory lane. 

Home to a million memories, Mavalli Tiffin Room, or MTR as it is fondly called, is celebrating 100 years of service in 2024. The landmark building on Lalbagh Road at Mavalli has served lakhs of customers its iconic rava idlis, masala doses, badam halwa, and chandrahara, among other delicacies, since 1924.

In the early 1900s, three brothers — Yagnanarayana Maiya, Ganappayya Maiya, and Parameshwara Maiya — who were farmers from a village called Parampalli in Udupi district, came to Bengaluru to find work to battle financial issues. While they all initially found work in Bengaluru, one of them had to go back to their home town. Eventually, Yagnanarayana Maiya was supported by his employer to start a restaurant and thus MTR came to being.

In the beginning, MTR was a small food joint on Lalbagh Fort Road which sold coffee, tea, and doses. Only in 1960, the joint was transformed into the restaurant that exists today.

Narasimha Shetty, a senior citizen, remembers the early years of the new restaurant. “I have been coming here for 60 years. Back then, we would rush to MTR before 7.30 a.m. as the sambar would get over after that,” he chuckled. He listed dumroot, idli sambar, khara bath, and badam halwa as his favourites at MTR. 

In the 1970s, when the government announced the Emergency, MTR had to shut its doors for a while. But unwilling to let their staff bear the brunt of the closure and to provide them with an alternate employment opportunity, Yagnanarayana Maiya started a small store next door to sell masala powders and rava idli mix, which was named MTR Foods. 

“The speciality of MTR was that they would take a normal dish and give it a twist,” said Hemamalini Maiya, managing partner of MTR.