To start your day the Kolhapuri way is to start your day with misal. This delectable and fiery morning meal will get you going with its pungent flavours and tantalising aromas.

Traditionally a mixture of boiled matki and moong beans, potato, farsan, sev and kat, a spicy soup like gravy made with garam masala, onions, tomatoes, garlic, ginger and dry and wet coconut, misal is prepared slightly differently in various cities across Maharashtra, with Pune's misal having rice flakes or poha in addition to the regular ingredients.

Kolhapur though is the right place to taste the authentic stuff. The city has its fair share of misal tupris (little shacks) with most localities having their own regular neighbourhood misalwalla. Phadtare Misal Centre, an unassuming little place located in Udyam Nagar, the city's first small scale industrial area, has its share of regular customers in addition to the many more who come to taste their famed misal.

From the outside Phadtare is easy to miss, slightly off the beaten track and blending in with the many machine shops and motor garages in the area, but step inside and it's teeming with hungry Kolhapuris indulging in the city's favourite snack. On a Sunday it isn't unusual to have to wait 20 minutes to get a place on one of their wooden benches, with Phadtare selling an average of 300 plates of misal from 8.30 a.m. to noon on weekends.

What is now a profitable business started off as a part-time hobby for Anant Rao Krishnaji Phadtare in 1991 who ran a machine shop where the misal centre is located. Over the years however fewer farmers wanted to get their sugarcane crushing machines reconditioned and Anant Rao's love for cooking misal for his family and friends gradually turned into their main business. The machine shop still exists and Anant Rao and his sons Praful and Pravin, who picked up their cooking skills watching their father, still continue to repair crushing machines once the misal selling is done for the day.

Breakfast preparations are in full swing by 4 a.m. when the family starts making the 7 kg of kat masala that is required daily. One of the most essential ingredients in misal, kat is what gives the meal its distinctive flavour. After three hours over a hot stove, the kat is ready in a big stainless steel utensil in the machine shop and so are the Phadtares for another day of work.

They start serving at 8.30 a.m., with misal priced at Rs.12 per plate. The mixture of boiled gram, potato, diced onion, farsan, sev and a little yogurt is placed in a bowl, the kat poured over the mixture and grated wet coconut and coriander sprinkled over the top. The misal is served with bread dipped into the gravy and unlimited amounts of kat refills are available so the meal can in fact be made as light or heavy as one wants.

As Anant Rao explained with a broad smile, he never imagined that his part-time hobby would turn into a business big enough to be written about, as he proudly showed us an article on the misal centre in Business India and another one that featured in the Marathi paper Tarun Bharat.