Ananda Bhavan 

The Fable

One of the oldest restaurants in the Food Fable Trail, Ananda Bhavan was set up in May 1924 at 221 Selegie Road and was taken over in a burst of entrepreneurial spirit by the current owner, Mr M K Rama�s late uncle in 1926 from the original owner. Arriving penniless in Singapore in 1924, Mr Rama�s uncle found a job as a waiter and quickly worked his way up the ranks of the restaurant hierarchy before he managed to secure the restaurant for himself in a relative short period of only two years. 

Although the founder later on lost his life to a Japanese air raid in 1942, the troubles for the restaurant and the chain it had spawned, had not ended. As the war went on, the family had one of their restaurants confiscated by the Japanese occupants for hoarding 40 bags of rice and the impossible food rations imposed on the local populace made it very difficult for the restaurant to secure the varied spices and ingredients that are the hallmark of South Indian cuisine and in such they had to resort to substitutes like tapioca in the occupation years. 

The Food

Named after the house that belonged to the first Prime Minister of independent India, Ananda Bhavan simply means the House of Bliss. And as most diners would attest, Ananda Bhavan does evoke a sense of epicurean happiness. 

A vegetarian restaurant, Ananda Bhavan serves a varied array of thosais, wheat-based crepes, which could be eaten with chutney or stuffed with fillings of masala. Masala is essentially a combination of different spices that are dried or roasted, and ground into either a fine powder or a wet paste. It represents a cocktail of spices that varies from chef to chef and is a chief component of Indian cooking. 

On closer inspection, the diner might find the masala filling for Anadan Bhavan�s onion masala thosai slightly more reddish than the typical yellow masala filling at other establishments. This, as Mr Rama, explained was due to the bulk of Malay customers that had once resided behind the shop. As Malays prefer their thosais to be slightly spicier, chilli padi was incorporated into the masalai mix to cater more to their taste.