All-time favourites like dal vada and pappadam may disappear from restaurants, at least temporarily, and the everyday saambar stock will probably get thinner with the price of pulse varieties hitting a new high this week.
A Kochi hotelier said they stopped making dal vada from Wednesday with the price of urad dal ( uzhunnu ) shooting up to Rs.200 a kg in the retail market. Some of the hoteliers like him have also said they will stop serving pappadams with meals because of the prohibitive dal price.
A retailer said that urad dal sold for Rs.170 a kg on Wednesday. “We have not raised the price though uzhuunnu was being sold for Rs.200 a kg by most traders here”, he said. He blamed a serious shortage of pulses for the continuous price rise over a month.
According to him, most of the pulses – green gram, green gram dal, black gram, tur dal, urad, Bengal gram and peas dal, are in short supply. The shortage was in the range of 30 to 40 per cent, he said.
Just as home budgets are upset and hoteliers are at a loss, pappadam -makers too have started making losses. P.P. Molly, who heads a pappadam -making unit under Kudumbasree mission in West Kochi, says that it is impossible to make both ends meet with the price of uzhunnu going through the roof this month.
“We are in for losses this month and production has been cut down substantially. The unit makes about 250 kg of pepper pappadam daily. A kg of pappadam is sold for Rs.285 and it is not possible to raise prices any more,” she said. The wholesale price of uzhunnu powder was Rs.147 a kg and it looks like the price will go up to Rs.200 a kg, making units like Molly’s unviable.
