BENGALURU: As a dollop of ghee melts on a bed of steaming hot rice and tangy palak dal, jostling for the diner's attention on the plantain leaf is the trademark gun powder, gongura and avakai. Nothing satiates a south Indian tummy quite like an Andhra meal.Food specialists believe Bengaluru has the highest number of Andhra cuisine restaurants in India, higher than in Hyderabad Nellore or Visakhapatanam Amit Roy of hospitality consulting fir m ThinkTanc, says, “There are over 2,000 Andhra restaurants (including unorganised ones) here. For lunch, Andhra meals grabs the number one spot in our city followed by darshinis and North Indian restaurants.“ Roy attributes this mushrooming to the proximity between the two IT hubs.The first batch of restaurants such as RR,Nagarjuna, Navayuga, Annapoorna and the like opened in the 1980s. Chains of Andhra restaurants is a more recent phenomenon.Suresh Hinduja, founder of Gourmetindia.com, who is working on a cook book on Andhra food, said, “Children of wealthy landlords from Andhra Pradesh came to Bengaluru to study in the 1980s. When their parents found a dearth of good home food, they capitalised on the opportunity to open restaurants here.“That is exactly the story behind Nagarjuna. It opened in 1984 when agriculturalist N Krishna Reddy from Nellore found that his son, studying engineering in Bengaluru, was not getting quality Andhra food. Today , the restaurant sells about 700 meals a day .Sandeep Reddy , managing director of Nagarjuna Chimney , says, “If you want to eat an authentic Andhra meal in Hyderabad, there are just three restaurants that come to mind.It's primarily available in homes. Bengaluru's IT pockets like Sarjapur, Whitefield and Marathahalli have 5-6 on a single stretch.“Shweta Ravi, director of the Nandhana Palace chain, says, “In the past five years, the only cuisine to have multiplied (in the chain format) in Bengaluru is Andhra.“ Nandhana was opened by her father in 1997. It serves traditional recipes from regions like Nellore, Guntur and Amaravati. Their cooks were sent to the Araku valley forest in Visakhapatnam to learn how to make bamboo chicken, the tribal way .Like the exponential growth of Asian food, Andhra cuisine is also diversifying. It is going beyond routine chilli chicken, biryani and meals.Experts note that the city will soon find restaurants serving cuisines from regions within Andhra, such as Rayalaseema, Guntur and Chittoor.