Food brings about many debates! Authentic or tweaked to the market? Fusion or Classic? Modern or Classic? Original recipe or Modern Twist? Classic or Contemporary. These debates rage on forever and like most debates, there is never a winner! Canon or Nikon? Nope, no clear winner!

Then one smart alec chef decides to put on the plate! BOTH! I mean, no this or that. This AND that! Every single dish on the (festival) menu has two versions of dish on one plate! While I've been seeing a lot of interesting food promos at The Park recently, today I've been kicking myself for not attending those! Clearly, their Chef Saravanan has few tricks up his sleeve. He is already a mini celebrity with a TV show for himself on Sun TV, and gladly, I got a chance to meet him. It was the first day of the festival and the orders were delayed because they had an overwhelming response!

Obviously! If you are giving two dishes on every plate, this is something indeed! We started off with the simplest of simple salad! The Caesar! The original was simply the original. Some lettuce strewn and some dressing tossed with loads of parmesan cheese! It was classic, but the modern take was fabulous. A poached egg with a parmesan dressing on lettuce and I don't have a picture of that! Crap! Classic 0, Contemporary 1.

Next up was the soup! A lobster bisque! Classic was classic! Fantastic Lobster Bisque with a nice smoky flavour, but the modern take was brilliant too! Served with a little biscotti with meat and foam on top, you tend to think if this is a clever way to take a dig at the purists! Simply present them with the outdated form of food and a modern take right next to each other and with a IN-YOUR-FACE presentation, they are bound to take a view! Draw here. Classic 1, Contemporary 2

Three main courses (two of us and we shared each dish). Salmon was the only one that didn't vary too much between classic and contemporary. I guess you can't do much to a piece of fish flown in from Europe! So no points for either. Classic 1, Contemporary 2.

I definitely wanted to try the Shepherd's pie. Whoa! Classic was classic. Beautiful tenderloin topped with mashed potatoes!Yum till we had the contemporary version! Meat rolled inside thin potatoes! Whoa. It wasn't a deconstructed dish, it was a completely new dish altogether but retaining not just the essence, but the entire flavour of the original. Classic was good, but contemporary was brilliant. Classic 1, Contemporary 3.

Prawn Gravy. Mini dosa with a brilliant prawn gravy was the classic version which was yum as all of the classics were! The modern was a beautiful take. A rice pasta with the prawn gravy on top. Beautiful idea and a great way to bring a South Indian take to a modern presentation with the rice pasta, but the classic was classic! Modern simply did not kick classic's @ss here! Classic 2, Contemporary 3.

Dessert was a beautiful Lemon Merengue Pie! The classic was yum, the contemporary was yum and the flavours were all the same! So draw! Classic 3, Contemporary 4. A few more dishes on the menu and only then we will know which is the clear winner, but the winner is the concept!

Pricing is very nice. The starters were priced at Rs. 275 and the main courses between 425 and 575 and considering you get two dishes (smaller version) in each dish, a nice meal for two will cost under Rs. 2500 for a three course meal. The festival is on till the 26th, but I am more interested in what this chef is going to bring out next! Wouldn't mind going back for another cup of the Lobster bisque! 

When it rains, it pours!! Yeah, this month sees a battalion of new launches and food festivals in Chennai. What started off with the Cuisines from the Nawabs has taken a detour to Goa, with new menu launches at On the rocks and the Citibank Restaurant Week's 2nd edition in Chennai, this month is a bang!!!!

So, when we say Goan food, we think of beaches, grilled fish, chips, mayo dips and booz! Right? Wrong, apparently. A few years back, a very nice Goan food fest at Residency gave me insights into Goan cuisine which was helmed by a home chef, but this time at Hyatt Regency's Spice Haat, they flew down their exec chef from their Goa Hyatt!!! So what's wrong with grilled fish, chips, mayo dips and booz? Everything!

"Those are the fancy beach foods that were born out of necessity due to lots of foreign tourists," he says. The real Goan cuisine is far from that. So, peri peri chicken has the peri peri chilly? Peri Peri unlikely! :-) "The names have stuck from the olden times, but we now rarely use the peri peri chilly itself, but a blend of spices to give a similar feel," feels the chef. The actual peri peri chilly is way too spicy, apparently!

While it is available as part of the buffet, me being a buffet-hater, preferred the thali. Though available only for dinner, the stuff that comes in the thali (except the dessert which you have to move your backside and walk to the buffet) has everything in the buffet that is part of this festival. Oh, except starters also, but that is served on your table.

And we had the peri peri chicken and a crispy fried squid to start off. Now that I know there was no peri peri chilly, my brains were confused, but not enough to stop me and the friends from gulping down a few prawns and squid. For the main course, I liked only two dishes, the Goan Chicken Green Curry, which I thought will taste similar to the Thai green curry, but they are like, poles apart. Extremely flavourful but completely different from the Thai Green curry.  I also liked the mushroom Xacuti, which is a spice blend of 12 different spices. Again, names stuck, but our chef here didn't mention much about the how the names originated.

While the main courses were a combination of hits and misses for me, the desserts were excellent. While we also had the only dessert that we (or at least I) know of, the Bebinca, which was excellent by the way, we also had what they call the Dodol and another one called Alle Belle. Now, this Dodol is exactly what my family makes calling it, 'Karupatti Halwa' or Black Jaggery Halwa! It was great to be able to get that taste after so long and I wonder how it made its way from Nagercoil to Goa (or vice versa). The Alle Belle was like a modern Goan dessert, with a stuffed pancake, rather crepe stuffed with coconut and nuts!

Since it is part of the buffet, its the same price as the buffet, but you can get the thali for about 200 bucks lesser. Look for more from the Restaurant Week when the post goes up on Monday!!! 

Home cooked food is the best! But whose home? Gary of the Masterchef Australia's fame, I think put it aptly. "Food is never as good as your mom's. Or mine."

"What is 'authentic? I'm a Coorgi, married to a Coorgi, and both homes have completely different styles of food," was how the conversation started, a few minutes before we walked into Clubhouse, the all day dining at Taj Clubhouse!

Do both homes have 'akki otti?"

Yes.

Good enough!

So, Taj Clubhouse decided to partner with a Coorgi Chennaite to bring in flavours from the Coorg region. I thought the move was excellent. No matter how much you stick to your roots, there is room for 'experimentation' with flavours in a 5 star environment and partnering with a localite might help mitigate that! Yesterday, it seemed to have worked! I could have been eating all this at a home in Coorg and wouldn't have known that it was made in a 5 star hotel.  I learnt that Coorgis grow a lot of cardamom and so there is a heavy infusion of cardamom in their food. They also apparently grow rice and so every bit of the rice is used for something. So the husk is one roti (or otti as they call it), another part is a 'puttu' and a different part is a different puttu! And I heard that their cuisine is called the Kodava cuisine.

Deep fried dishes were the order of the day! At least the beginning of the evening. Mushrooms deep fried with crumbs. Fish, minced and deep fried with crumbs, raw banana, yep, deep fried with crumbs. But every deep fry felt and tasted like a home made deep fry! Light, fresh and tasty! The one and only non deep fried dish was a juicy, succulent chicken that vanished in no time. The 'attu kaal soup', or the lamb leg soup was excellent. My grand mom would have written it off as the flavours she made for me were almost entirely different, but I am sure many grand moms in Coorg might have praised it!!!! It was a very different attu kaal soup for me and it took some getting used to, but after 5 teaspoons of getting used to, I was used to it. And finished the bowl!

And then came the rice! With no rice! Well almost! The first was the coarse part of the rice. That was made into a coarse 'puttu'. And then the slightly finer part was made into a fine puttu. And the finest was rolled into a roti, that they call 'Akki Otti.' Those white round things are not rasagolla, but a rice puttu! For me, who has been around eating in multiple restaurants over the last week for a variety of reasons, the home cooked type food was a welcome. Friends, beautiful restaurant, home cooked food! Wow! The vegetable sides were perfect and the only things that gave away and had 'Restaurant' written all over it was one of the desserts - a cardamom custard! Essentially a caramel custard with an overdose of cardamom, but the overdose was intentional. And nice!

The Kodava/Coorg Food fest by Taj Clubhouse, partnering with Mrs. Smitha Kuttaya, is on till the 28th of Sept!!!

I couldn't wait to write about the desserts at Pan Asian and that is why Part 2 of the dessert hop came before Part 1, but that should in no way undermine the dessert we had at Focaccia, Hyatt Regency. When Chef Roberto was brought into Focaccia, he was appalled that I thought of another Tiramisu as being the best in Chennai. While you can read the whole thing here, in a nutshell, he wanted to us try his Tiramisu and we were floored. And that is why, I had insisted that my friends must try the Tiramisu here.

But after we went there, we were told that they have another excellent dessert and we thought, 'why not?' And that is how we discovered Chocolate Salami! It was a dessert with three thick slices of chocolate that had biscuits inside it and served with Creme Anglaise. It was super yum and since I loved chocolate with some crunch in them, this was a killer dessert for me! The Tiramisu! Oh wow. My other partners in dessert crime agreed that this was by far the best Tiramisu in Chennai! I think baking their own lady finger biscuits make a big difference, but whatever the reason........

Our final stop of the day was EST, Hilton for Macarons. EST is a very reasonably priced cafe for a 5 star hotel and with the Happy Hours happening from 5 PM to 11 PM, everything on the counter is on a 50% discount. Their macarons were excellent and thats why we picked up a piece each. At Rs. 40 a macaron, they were far better than most wanna-be macarons in Chennai. But this time, it was a miss. The macarons were a little too sweet for me! But the price of 3 macarons was Rs. 63 after the 50% discount, but though it was a miss, it certainly wasn't bad and I have had much worse macaron in Chennai!

And that concludes Dessert Hop!!!

The new found joy of stepping out on Sunday has happened and though it is not happening every week, I must say that I am enjoying this not-sleeping-late on Sundays. Yes, I said it. But then, this happens once a month and I don't know if I will walk around like a zombie if I step out EVERY SUNDAY. After Leela's brunch which was followed by two breakfast Sundays, this time the decision was easy. It was easy because I didn't have to make the decision as Taj invited me to try out their Sunday Brunch at the Verandah, Vivanta by Taj Connemara. The invite itself was inviting! Soak in the pool, eat a lazy brunch, enjoy some magic and go back refreshed, it said! With brunches now becoming the norm on Sundays, hotels are trying various things to woo the guests, but I like this 'Dip in the pool' type of wooing!

The pool opens at 1130 am and given the weather the last few days when the Sun decided to go on a hibernation, it was just about perfect! You can laze as much as you want and swim whatever you can in the four feet deep pool and just lounge. This is a  great part of the Sunday brunch and is well worth getting out of bed if you're getting into the Taj pool. There is a live grill right next to the pool, so you can smell while you swim and boy, that does stimulate your appetite. More than stimulate your appetite. 

The second part of it, the food, though good, wasn't extremely impressive. The grill next to the pool had sea food, but no meat, so we ended with a portion of grilled prawns that weren't great! The tandoor had broccoli and tandoori chicken, both of which weren't particularly impressive. The brunch is not extensive by any definition, so do not expect a huge brunch. There was an excellent bread counter with numerous choices of breads and four cheese options, though the choices of cheese weren't very impressive! Good old cheddar and Gouda and the only thing exciting for me was the Brie! There was a chaat counter which doled out some nice stuff and a momo station which served excellent momos. 

Apparently Taj has a large Anglo Indian patron base, so there were quite a few Anglo Indian dishes. The Anglo Indian fish curry was exciting with the Anglo Indian version of Coconut rice and the flavours were quite different to what I am used to. The herb grilled chicken was excellent and the live sandwich counter was excellent. I had a sandwich with chicken salami, grilled lamb and sausages and you can go crazy with your choice of meat and veggies and make it large! I did! The biriyani.....well.....

Desserts were quite impressive for me, particularly the fig halwa was a stunner! Like most brunches, dessert was a mixed bag, but the ones that were good, were very good, especially the mango stuff! The mothers day special dessert that was offered was excellent. Like most brunches in Chennai, this is predominantly lunch, so don't expect dosa, idly, pancake, waffles and other breakfast stuff. I stopped expecting and so brunches are better for me these days! The magician with his card tricks was a joy. He came to our table, distracted us completely and was enjoyed by all of us! 

Priced at Rs. 1750 all inclusive, this is a package and must be looked as a package. Go in at 1130, take a swim, relax, unwind, breathe in the smell of grilled food, stimulate your appetite, have the food, enjoy some magic and it is well worth the price. If you go there at 1 PM just for the food, you might not come back feeling good! 

Verandah is the 24 hour coffee shop at Vivanta by Taj Connemara, Egmore.

This place has been a refuge camp for late nighters since God knows how long! And a place for star spotting post midnight. The star spotting has reduced considerably, though there are those who still swear by this place, but its more grandiose cousin, the Grand Chola, has definitely taken away some of its spotlight. But after a rather sad experience in a new Palace Hotel, we found the comfort here rather welcoming.

The place was almost empty at about 11 PM, so getting a table was a non-issue. The big bunch was tired and irritated and so the orders were placed rather quickly. For the first time, out of the eight, five of them chose to go the easy way and get a set meal. So two Chinese set meals, two Indian set meal, a sea food set meal finished the set meal orders, while I wanted to try their burger and my old favourite, the bolognese pasta and one person ended up with a 'Raliway' gravy that was served with rice and there is an option of having it with Indian Breads. The burger was a very comfort burger, and it has certainly dropped a few notches from what it was before, but the bolognese pasta was outstanding and liked clean!

I was looking at a Cappuccino set meal for the first time, so I thought it was reasonably well done. Decent portions, not a wide range of flavours, and I believe they wanted it that way. With five of them not in the mood for dessert, three of us shared a coffee creme brule Everybody was happy with their respective dishes, none of it was outstanding except the pasta, none of it was bad, service was excellent and I guess this makes it a 5 star adda!!! 5 star comfort food if you call it that! 

The day finally arrived. I got a message from Ali, the ubiquitous chief of CFG, informing the invite from Vipin to check out Burgandy. With a few friends already having tried the place and giving me the feeling that I was missing something in life by not having been there yet, I was really looking forward to the lunch.

By the time I landed, everyone else was settled in with Vipin (for those who don't know what I am talking about, he is the owner of Burgandy and Tuscana and Kryptos and the Subways in Chennai), at the center and being his usual entertaining self. Looked like I was not the only one who was dying to get here.

The ambiance is beautiful to say the least, but I was dying to get to the food. Starters came and we had some great kebabs. The chicken kebab was juicy and tasty, the paneer was outstanding and the other starter for the day was also great. Starters are served on the table along with the pizzas, so you can warm up before walking to the buffet. Talking of pizzas, I love the ones at Tuscana and this group has really mastered the art of pizza making and burgundy is no different. After hearing and learning something from Vipin, we headed out to the buffet. The buffet here is unique in its layout, no staffing dishes, no cold food and waiting for hot ones to arrive. The layout is such that food is kept in small quantities and keeps arriving hot right from the counter behind, so if you want small changes, they are more than happy to make. Kudos to this.

For the first round, I had what looked like a Spanish omelette, a portion of stuffed chicken and a beef cutlet in red sauce. I gorged on the beef as it was super tasty, but after one bite, I could not take in the omelette anymore. Same story with the stuffed chicken. As much as I did not want to, I wasted my first plate entirely. Second round, I got myself some indian curries and dhal makhani and some nice naans were served on the table. This time was better than the first round, but not outstanding. Being still hungry, I got myself some cold dishes out of which the prawns were excellent, the cold sandwich was nice and the hummus and baba ganoush with the pita bread were decent stuff. I was washing down the food with an excellent mocktail, I cannot recall the name, but it was litchis with cranberry juice. There is a huge dessert spread and I tried a little bit of everything on the dessert and I thought that the mango soufflé was decent, but other wise they were a typical "we have it all dessert.

Obviously with Vipin around, there is no way to judge service, but this group sets very high standards for service. Vipin took us to the kitchen and I realized how he had the guts to take his customers there. Generally if you visit a restaurant kitchen, you might quit eating out all together, but this is one of the most hygienic and top end kitchens you might ever get to see.

The menu changes for every meal and being a huge buffet, you will certainly find a few dishes that you will really like. I enjoyed the starters and the pizzas and if you eat a pizza and a few starters, you have got your money's worth. A five star buffet being priced at Rs. 750 nett, is great value for money, especially if you start counting how many non veg is on the buffet, but though the food is good, for me the "wow" factor that get even today at Tuscana was missing. I am planning to get back and try a-la-carte.

Food 7/10
Ambiance 9/10
Price 8/10

Burgandy is the all day dining (almost), at Somerset greenways, at MRC nagar.

I have been meaning to try out the Brunch at Paprika for quite sometime now, and I finally did so yesterday! At the outset, I still wonder why it is called 'Brunch'. It starts at 12 noon and ends at 4 pm, so it is definitely not 'brunch', but I guess it gives them the 'oommph' factor for their boring lunch buffet to be called 'Sunday Brunch'!!!

The spread I must say is impressive! It starts off with Tender Coconut in street style, complete with the 'Aruva' to cut it and served not in a glass but in the coconut itself! You see a live pasta counter, a live Indian chat counter, a live dosa counter and the dessert counter even as you enter. As you move to the end of the restaurant, you see a live laksha counter, a live biriyani counter, a live pizza counter, a live grill counter and a live salad counter! Phew! Quite a few live counters and I think this is the maximum number of live counters that I have seen  in a lunch buffet....sorry brunch!!! Apart from the live counters, you see some 'buffet style' dishes arranged neatly on a long counter, a large bread section, a large section of cold cuts and an impressive cheese section! Near the dessert section, you see......you guessed it..... more live counters - a live omelette counter and a live ice cream counter!!!

Now to taste them all! We started with breads, cold cuts and cheese! WOW!!! The breads were decent, but the cheese choices were amazing for a brunch in Chennai. I had Edam cheese, mozarella and about 5 other varieties that I am not able to recall the names of! But I enjoyed the choices of cheese with the cold cuts, which I feel, were simply stunning. The chicken ham, the terriyaki, a very new type of ham, chicken wrapped in beetroots, a very nice salmon with tomato and olives were the ones I tried and each of them were as impressive as the other! I needed to save space for the remaining mammoth buffet so I did not try the rest, but my friends tried the others and I got similar responses!

The chef then offered to make us some omelette and we chose to have cheese and chicken in our omelette, and in the meanwhile ordered some beef, chicken and fish off the live grill counter. The pieces were small, so we ordered one of each in both Indian and Continental style. The egg arrived first and was oozing with cheese and chicken and was stunning! But all the grilled foods were just alright, except for the beef which was very good! We asked for pepperoni pizza with olives and the works and found it to be just alright again.

We then moved on to the laksha, which was very average, and then stood by the first three live counters, the dosa, pasta and Indian chat. You get a choice of red sauce or white sauce with a choice of veges and chicken for your pasta, a large choice of 'masala' for your dosa ranging from the age old potato, to corn, corn n peas, baby corn and a quite a few more. Each of us ordered a different pasta and dosa for us to get a taste of them all and all of them were quite average! We decided to completely skip the Indian chat and the Biriyani counters! We attacked the buffet spread next and also took on some salad! The garlic potatoes and the chicken ragma (what ever that was) was brilliant. It was minced chicken cooked to perfection with I have no idea what, but it was brilliant. The others were again average.

Just before we hit dessert, I had to have another take at the cheese and cold cuts and had my fill! We then moved to the dessert section and the choices are too many to name. My favorites were the chocolate mousse, a couple of small pastries and the baklava. The Baklava, though not the best in town, was quite good, while some of the pastries were well done. The live ice cream counter guy gave me an ice cream sandwich - a very nice tea cake, with the ice cream of choice and a choice of toppings - I had honey and choco chips! We finished it off with some Illy coffee which was again just average!

Overall, the spread of the buffet is amazing, so you should be able to find quite a few dishes to your liking and that itself will justify the Rs 1100 you pay per person for the buffet. While it is not justified to expect everything to taste great, I loved the cheese, bread, cold cuts, egg to order and quite a few items on the dessert menu, I was rather disappointed that the pasta and the grills were not upto the mark, something which I think is not too much to expect. Biriyani, dosa, laksha and chat were all there, but not great, the buffet menu was just ok, but overall good value for money and very good quality in most of the foods!!!

Food 8/10
Price 7/10
Ambiance 8/10
Service 8/10

Paprika is located at the lobby of The Courtyard Marriot hotel, on Mount Road!

Accord Hotel's coffee shop Seasons is where 14 of us head to for a friend's birthday treat! Usually for such large groups a buffet is the best bet and since none of us had tried this one in particular, the decision was sealed.

Its only later we knew why we have not been here for so so long!

Soup was served on the table and the choices were mixed seafood soup and mixed veg soup. Somehow, I believe that the soup in a buffet should be chicken for the non veg. Chicken is the most commonly consumed non veg item and quite a few non vegetarians do not consume prawns and certain kinds of fish, and its unfair that they have to choose a veg soup. The same happened to this group and 9 of the 12 non vegetarians had to choose the veg soup which was very average and disappointing.

We were served quite a few starters on the table too and the potato salad, the grilled chicken and one of the fish dishes  was good. All others were an eye wash for a starter. So we moved on pretty quickly to the main course.

The main course had a 'multi cuisine' part and an 'Italian' part to it. I tasted almost every dish on the menu and was thoroughly disappointed. Except a few dishes like the beef lasagna, the seared chicken, the potato tikki, the singapore chicken and a few salads, rest were very very average for a restaurant in a hotel of this caliber. The biriyani was very average ( I am very strict with my biriyani standards, but most people in the party were not too happy either and hence the verdict).

There was a huge dessert spread and most of them were average. The fruit shots were an exception and were good. The pineapple custard cake was nice and the brownie was decent. The ice creams were HARD and extremely difficult to take and tasted like old ice creams.

Service and ambiance were good and no complaints on that front. But being priced at about Rs 845 per person, I did expect something more.

Overall, it was a disappointment on the food front. Seasons, though meant to give us variety, only showed us obscene winters and merciless summers with occasional pleasantness between them.

Food 5/10

Service 7/10

Ambiance 7/10

Price     6/10  

Seasons is the coffee shop at The Accord Metropolitan Hotel on G N Chetty Road, T. Nagar.

601, the 24 hour coffee shop at THE PARK has had a history of fluctuating reviews and opinions, but on the Sunday that I landed there, I caught them on their good days I guess, as I was taken through a wonderful food experience.

4 adults and 1 kid we were, extremely hungry as we were heading for a late lunch at about 4 PM! We were seated with no hassles and ordered some fresh orange juice to start our meal. We skipped the starters and headed straight to the main course and ordered a barrage of sea food stuff- boiled lobster, roasted salmon, grilled tiger prawns with crab cakes, fish n chips, one kids meal- fried fish, and one land animal- tenderloin steak!

The lobster was shown to us and at 515 grams, was the perfect size for meal that was not too expensive, I am not particularly in favor of lobsters greater than 1 kg in size! This lobster was boiled to the PERFECT consistency and flavor- some great lemon garlic and cheese, and this is definitely among the best lobsters I have eaten world wide! The grilled prawns were fantastic and so were the crab cakes. The roasted salmon was very bad- the fish was not fresh, had a funny smell, was served with a barrage of salads and nothing else and was a bad order. The beef tenderloin awesome and the caramelized beet root and the baked cheese that was served with it were brilliant too.The fried fish for the kid was pretty good, but the fish n chips was not great at all, it was just a fish fillet dipped in flour and fried and there are much better ones in Chennai, but the other 3 dishes really blew our minds!

We were so full that we did not have space for desserts. The place is definitely expensive, the above dishes coming up to Rs 7200! Service was average as it was an odd time to be at a restaurant, but hey this is 24 hour coffee shop in a star hotel, so I did expect more!

Food 8/10 for the 4 good dishes, 5/10 for the other two!
Ambiance 7/10
Price 6/10
Service 6/10

601 is the 24 hour coffee shop at THE PARK hotel on Nungambakkam High Road!