How a Search for a Good Highway Cafe Led to Sila

The idea for Sila—the farmside dining café on the Bengaluru-Hyderabad Highway loctaed amid Ervana Wildfarms, began with a fairly ordinary problem. Apuroop Arja and Pratyusha Kethinedi had a farm, they spent a lot of time there, and whenever friends came visiting, they struggled to find a good place to eat or stay.

“We used to come to the farm quite often and we couldn’t get a nice place to eat, a nice place to stay,” Apuroop says. “We travel a lot, and slowly we realised that agro-tourism was something we could explore.”

The farm had already become a gathering place for their friends. Before there was a restaurant, they would camp there, spend time outdoors and use it as a base. So the first thought was uncomplicated: why not build a small cafe for themselves?

That plan changed once they began exploring the region with their architects.

They travelled hundreds of kilometres through the interiors of Rayalaseema, looking beyond the obvious and paying attention to the things that were already part of the landscape. Stone became one of the first discoveries. They found a local limestone called Kandaraayi (muscle stone), a stone that had not been used commercially for centuries because it was difficult to extract and work with.

“It took us about eight months to find where the stone came from,” Apuroop says. “We finally found it in a deep valley and had to take government permission because nobody was actually working that quarry. We had to figure out how to use it ourselves.”

 For co-founder Pratyusha, the stone was worth the effort. Her interior design background made her particular about what went into the space, and she was not interested in using materials simply because they were readily available.

That search for something rooted in the region eventually changed the scale of the project. “That’s when we thought this idea should not end up as just a small cafe,” Apuroop says.

The more they travelled, the more they began to see the region differently. They learnt about the Erramala landscape, its red soil, forts, caves and old building traditions. They started looking at materials, crafts and food as parts of the same story. Almost everything at Sila was then approached through that lens. 

The stones used in the building came from the surrounding region. The founders worked with local artisans, including a craftsman from Kurnool whose family has been involved in temple architecture and restoration for generations. Even the large stone letters at the entrance were made as part of this effort to work with local material and craftsmanship.

The design itself is deliberately quiet.

“We wanted it to stand out, but we also wanted the eye to go outward, for people to notice the farm and the surroundings,” Pratyusha says.

The earthy tones were chosen for the same reason. Rather than creating an interior that competes with the landscape outside, the building is meant to make the transition between indoors and outdoors feel almost seamless.

“The idea was to give people the thermal comfort and luxury of being indoors while still feeling like they are in a forest environment,” she says, adding, “While you are indoors, you should feel like you are outdoors.”

It is an approach that extends beyond aesthetics. Even on a highway where accessibility is often overlooked, the founders have thought about how different people experience the space. The washrooms, for instance, include a separate wheelchair-accessible facility.

The landscaping follows a similar logic. The founders have consciously used local species rather than introducing plants simply for visual effect. The farm, rather than being a backdrop to the restaurant, remains central to the experience.

That becomes most obvious when the food arrives.

The duo did not want to create a restaurant that merely borrowed the name of Rayalaseema cuisine while making food that could belong anywhere. They travelled, ate, spoke to people and collected recipes and references from towns and villages around them.

“We were very clear that we wanted regional cuisine because we are into permaculture,” Apuroop says. “Permaculture is all about being local, so we wanted to keep it local.”

There was another problem to solve. Rayalaseema food is often reduced to its heat, with chilli becoming the easiest shorthand for the cuisine. “We wanted to explore the flavours of Rayalaseema rather than just the spice of Rayalaseema,” he says.

The menu therefore tries to retain the character of the region without overwhelming the ingredients. Local vegetables, gongura, podis, pachadis and traditional preparations sit alongside dishes inspired by food they encountered during their travels.

Some of the most interesting references came from the roadside. The founders looked at the way chicken is cooked and sold in places such as Ullendukonda and Belavaram, where evening street-side preparations have their own rhythms and flavours. Those became starting points for dishes such as Ulindakonda Murgh tikka and Bellavaram Chicken Vepudu. “We took them as a reference and created our own version,” Apuroop explains.

The same process happened with other dishes picked up from nearby towns. The intention was not to reproduce street food literally, but to give someone travelling through the region a sense of what people actually eat there.

The menu is also being shaped by people who work in and around the farm. Sila has a mix of local and non-local kitchen staff, but training local employees has been part of the process from the beginning. Many had never worked in a commercial kitchen, so the learning has happened gradually.

Some of the recipes have changed because of that exchange. Local cooks have questioned techniques, suggested changes and brought back flavours they know from home.

Shantamma is one example. She started as cleaning staff when the restaurant was being launched and eventually began cooking for the team. “A lot of the very local, authentic dishes have been refined by the local people who keep coming into the kitchen. They just know the best,” acknowledges Apuroop.

That gives the menu a quality that the founders seem comfortable leaving unfinished. It is still changing as the farm changes, as ingredients come into season and as more people from the region contribute to it.

The connection to the farm is particularly direct. Much of what is served begins with produce grown on the property, and the founders are also experimenting with longer lead times for special experiences. For a chef’s table, for instance, they can take advance notice and grow specific ingredients on the farm. The idea is to make the kitchen respond to the land rather than forcing the land to respond to the kitchen.

Even the most popular dishes carry traces of that philosophy. Broccoli has become a bestseller despite not being a traditional Rayalaseema ingredient, while dishes such as Gongura preparations, Gutti Vankaya Pulao, Veg Korma, Natukodi Ragi Sangati and Military Mutton Keema have found their own following. For vegetarians must try Gongura Pappu Ragi Sangati and Karivepaku Puttagodugulu (sautéed mushrooms seasoned with curry leaf powder) among other things on offer. The best thing about Sila is that somewhere along the way while you are craving comfort food, you eat that food which feels like home.

The founders are also looking beyond the plate. They want Sila to become a place where visitors experience more of the culture around it. They have been speaking to artists and building a directory of performers from the region, with plans to bring in traditional forms including puppet shows and local dance as part of cultural immersions for their guests.

There is also a plan for a farmers’ market around the pergola, where produce grown on the farm, along with things such as dal, can be sold directly.

Meanwhile, for children, the farm can become a classroom of sorts. The founders want to conduct interactive permaculture activities, allowing children to walk through the farm and understand how plants grow together rather than simply seeing vegetables arrive on a plate. A cafe that began because two people could not find a good place to stop on their road trips has therefore become something much larger.

The search for a restaurant led them 700 kilometres into the region. It introduced them to a forgotten stone, local craftspeople, roadside food, cooks, artists and traditions they might otherwise have passed by.

Sila is the result of that search, but perhaps more importantly, it is a way of asking travellers to slow down long enough to notice where they are. The founders’ original idea was to create a place for themselves and their friends.

Instead, they ended up creating a place that tells the story of the landscape around it.