The Hindu              18.05.2013

Affordable food coming your way

Jayalalithaa may open ‘Amma Unavagam’ during her Srirangam visit.

Amma Unavagam, which has proved a hit with Chennai residents, will soon start functioning in the city with the Tiruchirapalli City Corporation determined to create the necessary infrastructure for the budget canteens.

The canteens sell idlis for one rupee a piece and sambar and curd rice at Rs.3 a plate. Chief Minister Jayalalithaa recently announced that the restaurants would be opened in nine other municipal corporations across the State, including Tiruchi.

According to the corporation sources, work on the buildings is in full swing. With the Chief Minister scheduled to visit Srirangam to inaugurate and lay the foundation for various projects in her constituency on May 24, the corporation is pulling out all stops to get the facility ready in at least six locations where the works are in advanced stages. However, it is not clear whether the Chief Minister will inaugurate the restaurants though there are expectations that she might open the one coming up in Srirangam.

The restaurant in Srirangam will be located at the overhead drinking water tank complex near the Rajagopuram. Amma canteens are coming up near Uzhavar Sandhai in Anna Nagar, Puthur overhead drinking water tank complex, near Gandhi Market, near Ibrahim Park on West Boulevard Road, and near the Vazhividu Velmurugan Temple in front of the Railway Junction.

The corporation will provide the required infrastructure including buildings, kitchens, cooking and serving utensils and other paraphernalia. Already about 60 self-help group members, who will be cooking and running the restaurants, have been trained at the State Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology at Thuvakudi on the outskirts of the city. The Corporation will bear the salary expenditure of the staff to be deployed at the restaurants. The State government was likely to subsidise any gap between the revenue and expenditure, sources said.

The budget canteens now function in 200 wards in Chennai. Breakfast is served between 7 a.m. and noon, and lunch till 3 p.m. The menu of the restaurants has been expanded recently by the government to offer variety fare including pongal, tamarind rice, or curry leaf rice and chapathi.