It is so difficult to go for a fine dine South Indian restaurant for South Indians, I guess. Unlike most countries where fine dine is a way to showcase home cuisines, here we would prefer to try our fine dining at places that serve more exotic cuisines! Why pay for the ambiance when you eat what you normally eat at home, right? So a food festival titled MADRAS, celebrating the Madras Day, was the perfect excuse! I came back thinking we should go more often!

The best way to enjoy this would be to call the chef, tell him your budget and ask him to surprise you! Believe me, it takes away the hassle so much and he knows how to make it happen.

It starts off great with the papad platter, but with a twist. Crisp lotus stem papads! South Indian? I don't think so, but you wouldn't care. It was super yummy, flavoured like the mormozhaga and so was bang on South Indian flavours and set the tone for the dinner. Rather, set the tone for the rasam. So the lotus stem is not the only thing inspired by Indo Chinese meals! Like the Chinese tea, the pineapple rasam, was being refilled in the tiny cups throughout the meal! I am not a rasam fan, but I must've had at least three helpings! It was an awesome rasam with a tinge of sweetness from the fruit. Perfect for me!

Simple but superb chicken fry, some yummy prawns and their the signature Kair Katti Kola Urundai, basically, deep fried minced lamb set us off! I've been a huge fan of their Kair Katti Kola Urundai and since this was a chef meal, we stopped with one piece each!

The chef thali came along! It has small portions of many curries and we could choose two items to pair them with. We chose the dosa and the appams, but I wish I had tried the parathas too! With three gravies, one vada curry and one super yummy fried potato, this was really a kings platter. Every gravy was rich and since we didn't individually order, I don't know the names. Trust the chef and leave it to him! We finished off with two simple desserts!

Southern Spice has been highly ranked right from inception and it was nice to see South Indian food showcased in grand grand opulence. The ambiance and service are all top notch and I saw the chef greet every table and ask for preferences. Yes, this is food I get at home, but once in a while, especially when they have some unique festivals, Southern Spice has to be on every fine dine enthusiast's options!

A meal for two without drinks will set you back by about Rs. 3500! This food festival is on till the 28th of August 2016.

Southern Spice is at the Lobby level at Taj Coromandel, Nungambakkam. 

I've been talking about how it is slowly becoming cheaper to eat out at fancy places compared to stand alone, but sometimes this can be really ridiculous. Imagine, a five star meal for 750 plus tax, which comes to about Rs. 900! And that includes super premium places like Prego @ Taj Coromandel, which by the way is booked out! Citibank's Restaurant Week India, promoted as RWI makes this possible. While Citibank card holders have first peek and option to make the bookings, it is now open to all! The list of the restaurants are fabulous this time, considering that this is only the second time they are doing it in Chennai. All the good restaurants in Bangalore are booked out!

Last time, I went on the last day as I didn't know, but this time, I went on the first day. And at these prices, I will going a couple of times. The aim of this week is essentially to showcase the three course meals at most places at a fraction of the cost. So while I was going through all the menus, Beyond Madras stood out. One, I have not heard of this restaurant and two the menu was elaborate. A little google showed nothing at all and only after I went there was I told that the restaurant was launched along with the RWI. No wonder. So, there are some undue advantages here. No 3 course meal, their full daily menu on offer at 750 bucks. This has to be illegal!

So, Beyond Madras is the alter ego of their day restaurant, the Dining Room. By 7 pm everyday, the restaurant gets a make over and becomes all ethnic. I was fascinated to hear that Chef Balaji, the wonderful chef whose passion I saw during one of the Masters of Food and Wine, heads this restaurant. The chef comes to every table and explains the menu and talks to you about how he created this, which includes spending a week at Karaikudi to learn from grandmoms!!! Nice!

So, this a sit down buffet type place. The counters are all live and you get to see what is being cooked, but you don't really have to move from your table. There is a choice of sherbet, three starters, six gravies, four (they call it breads, but I wouldn't) stuff like idiyappam, rice, dosa and appam from the live counters and four desserts and the menu changes every week. Beautiful white table cloth with a nice white roof to bounce flash really helps too!!! Their price is 1350+ but for this week if you book through the RWI, its just 750 bucks.

My friend and me were just too happy with everything. We had a super nice gooseberry sherbet to start, but their appetiser bread was stunner. Now, we only think of focaccia and croissant and all of that when we think of breads and Indian breads usually mean just naan and paratha and stuff like that, but here the bread was fully South Indian flavour served with chutney. Loved the concept and the flavours.

Then we had a succulent lamb, a kambu paniyaram that was alright and a fantastic vazhakai varuval to start off. Most of the main courses come with the 'healthy' tag, so there is ragi dosa, ragi idiyappam, appam and such stuff. Don't let the tag put you off, because they were all fantastic. The fact that you have six gravies to mix and match makes this so much more exciting. Out of the six, the claypot meen manga (fish mango gravy) was the stand out!!!!

And then desserts! Wah. Filter coffee ice cream. Can't get more South Indian than that!!!! This with vattalappam, elaneer payasam and a super fantastic black rice with cardamom and sugar that was awesome. Chef Balaji also said that some of his dishes have been inspired by the outrageously talented but late Chef Jakob, so..........

I know the restaurant is new and so the full team is going great guns and really hope they can maintain this standard of food. You can't complain about the price but this week, at 750 bucks (okay, 900 bucks) this is a steal really!!!

You can make the bookings at http://restaurantweekindia.com to get the price. Prego and Golden Dragon are both in waiting list, but most other restaurants are available. Looks like not too many people know about this!!! 

Wanting to have a quick lunch, four of us took our car and noticed this Amma Chettinad board a short distance from work and decided to try it out! The place is absolutely no frills, but plays ONLY MGR songs! Nothing much as far as interiors go and we settled ourselves into a corner table for four and asked for what was available, hoping to get some kothu parota!

'Only meals and biriyani anna' is the reply we got! 'I can get you some pepper chicken, but thats all' said the waiter! So we ordered just one biriyani and one pepper chicken and thought we will taste it before we order more, but what we ate blew our minds. Immediately an order for a couple more pepper chickens and biriyani were placed and what was intended to be a quick short lunch, had us stuffed to our throats!!! The waiter then said that they have 'Mutton chukka' and without a blink, we ordered that as well! The chukka was certainly no match for the pepper chicken, but was pretty good, thought its quantity was tiny! The biriyani was the chettinad biriyani, not the Muslim one, and was pretty good with a nice large chunk of chicken inside!

Service is nothing great, the usual low end service and prices were great, the whole meal cost us around Rs 500! I would love to go back and try out their other chettinad stuff, but those things are only available after 730 PM, but I presume they will be great too!!!

Food 8/10
Service 6/10
Ambiance 6/10
Price 8/10

Amma Chettinad, is located in a street off GN Chetty Road (take the left next to Barathiraja Hospital, you can see the board at the start of the road)