The original steak holders

From an experiment that started as an attempt to make the Peace Corps feel more comfortable in the city, The Only Place has grown to become a culture with Bangaloreans

Bangalore was a quiet city then, content in itself, where life ambled along in its sluggish pace. Those were the days when two-way traffic was allowed on Brigade Road, and yet, one could cross the street unhurried, un-harried. Those were the days when Haji Sulaiman Ebrahim Sait sat in his cosy little shop at the Mota Arcade site, sewing impeccable suits for the airforce and armed forces with his sons.
Back then, tourists were a rare sight here, but the Peace Corps would troop into the city, and Ebrahim Sait's son, Haji Haroon Sulaiman Sait, would sit and watch them from their textiles shop. Haroon could understand that it was a bit of a struggle for the foreigners to get accustomed to the food and lodging here. For sometime, he had been feeling that the father's shop did not need so many hands, and with the Peace Corps and other foreigners (Danes, Swedes, Germans, Americans) often seen in the city, he had an idea. Haroon converted a bungalow they had on Brigade Road into a guest house, offering decent accommodation and simple English food -- omelette and toast for breakfast, stews and baked dishes for lunch and dinner -- to them.
Those are the beginnings of The Only Place, the steak house that is much loved and has become a habit with city dwellers, now nestled on Museum Road. Shoaib, Haroon's son, who heads the business now, said, "It was 1965. The guest house started and my grandmother, who was a great cook, would prepare the food for the foreigners."
Eating at the place was a communal affair, with the guests coming together for meals, and so became the cooking. Haroon would ask them about the kind of food they ate and preferred, fetch the ingredients from the market himself and often, the boarders would cook their native dishes while Haroon stood and watched. As his expertise grew, so did his menu. Shoaib said, "Iraqui soldiers also came in. They got their suits stitched at my grandfather's and had their meals at my father's. Thus, even Middle Eastern influences crept into our cooking." Steaks, pasta, spaghetti, pizzas, burgers -- names that sounded exotic and enticing were in Haroon's kitchen within a few years and in early 1970s there were cooks he was training, and city dwellers who also wanted to be a part of this new food movement.
Haroon threw his doors open to all. Shoaib, an electronics engineer by profession who has been a part of the computer revolution, also joined him in the business. "We would run on losses because my father would give food for free. Saturdays used to be barbeque days. He would roast a whole calf or sheep and feed everyone on the house. It used to be a social gathering more than anything else."
This restaurant, tucked away in a corner at the back of where now stands Mota Arcade, became a place where people would come to escape from the world, to meet and socialise. "So many love stories have begun here," said Shoaib, with a nostalgic look in his eyes. "In fact, guess who we used to see at the very beginning of his career. Prasad Bidappa would sit at the steps right in front and get the models ready with make-up there."
But on Christmas, 1987, they had to walk out of the premises -- 161, Brigade Road. The place was demolished with Mota Arcade coming up there. And suddenly, the original steak house of the city, the meeting place of people, was lost. But the many for whom The Only Place was exactly what it's name suggests, would not have it that way.
And back it came, on Museum Road yes, but with the old benches and tables (which used to be black and white because "paint was too expensive to afford) and tiled roof for that old world charm.
They still hand roll their pasta and pizza like in the olden days. Shoaib still has the pizza bases he had to get made from scratch from sheet aluminium, and the menu still has old favourites like steak and eggs (from Haroon's kitchen) and Shoaib's touches like the Whopper. In fact, they still have their forty-year-old menu card too, except that it is no longer Rs 5 for a steak.
We lost Haroon recently, but his legacy lives on, in Shoaib, in the great food and in the tradition he has left the city with.

[This was one of my articles for the space we call 'Down Memory Lane' in Expresso, The New Indian Express, Bangalore]