The home of Mysore Pak turns 106

Falah Faisal | NT

Bengaluru: Mysore Pak is now a world-famous sweet and one of Bengaluru's favorite exports, but very few people know that it was actually started by VA Venkatachalapathy Setty in Chikkaballapura over a hundred years ago.

Raghu Nagaraj, his grandson and the proprietor of the shop, explains, “Mysore Pak comes from the word paaka, which means sugar syrup. In those days, my grandfather used to travel by cycle and sell sweets. He moved to Bangalore around 1954 to start a sweet shop here. In those days, the entire state of Karnataka was known as Mysore, hence it got the name - Mysore Pak.”

The store is a mix of traditional sweets like Mysore Pak and dumrot and new innovations that are the brainchild of Raghu like Kaju coffee crunch, Kaju butterscotch bomb, and caramel dry fruit gujiya.

 “We sell over a hundred types of sweets, but our recipe book has over 4,000 sweet recipes in it,” said Raghu as an assortment of sweets and mixtures are presented. “All our masalas are in-house and we don’t source anything from outside,” he added.

 As he gives a tour of the three-floor kitchen, he says the only modernisation is the oven that makes the dumrot, everything else is done by hand, even making powders. Raghu then explains that the right way to eat Mysore Pak is to hold it around the edges, place it on your tongue and let it dissolve, or else you will be hurting the Mysore Pak.

The store is also known for their Chole Bhature which people order all the way from Whitefield, spending hundreds of rupees on transport. The store is a favorite of celebrities like MS Dhoni, Yash, and Prabhas, the latter of whom ordered the Mysore Pak from their store for the 'muharat' shot for one of his films. Their sweets also cut through the political divide, with both Rahul Gandhi and PM Modi having eaten there.

 “Until a few years ago, every state used to issue a travel guide, and in the Karnataka Travel Guide, it said that no trip to Bengaluru is complete without eating at Sri Venkateshwara in Balepete,” said Raghu. Despite being an age-old name, they only have two outlets – one in Balepete and another in Malleshwaram.

 “There are many imitators out there who use our name, but we are the one true original with the quality you won’t find anywhere else,” concludes Raghu