After the 5 stars and the Bangalore streets and sit-in Iftars, I had to try a couple of Combo Packs. At the first opportunity, my first choice was Zaitoon when I was stuck home-alone for Iftar!

First impressions: Beautifully packed in a nice hard box and the food was arranged well enough that it didn't shake or spill inside. Perfect!

Now for a box priced at Rs 299 for 300 things inside, you shouldn't complain at all. I mean, it is like a birth right to complain has been taken off!

Nannari Drink tasted funny. Like a little too strong nannari syrup inside kind of funny, but after a couple of sips, it simply went inside post the 14 hour fasting stomach. Spoilt for choice over what to eat first, I devoured the haleem. It was a little spicy for my liking, but the flavours were all there and wasn't some careless haleem. It was nice and boneless except for one teeny weeny bit of bone. At this price, no complaints!

Tiny puff like thing. It was like a cross between a samosa and a Lukhmi. Bite sized and perfect. This was followed by the Khubus and the yummy grilled chicken. It was a nice decent sized piece and not some set of bones thrown in. Along with the given Toum (the garlic mayo like paste), it was enough to break fast with!

Post prayers, I devoured the small paratha with a quite yummy chicken gravy, almost like a butter chicken, but with less butter! This was followed by the mini shawarma during Master Chef Australia and the dates. Yes, I had dates in the end!

The only complete disaster was the rice. I don't know if this batch was bad or it is always like this in the Iftar pack, the rice was kind of over cooked and I couldn't take more than a spoonful.

But at Rs. 299, I got more value that what I paid for. It wasn't too heavy and it can happily be a complete Iftar or if you have things at home, then one box can be a good accompaniment for two people. 

I've written about supper club a few times. Few because every time one starts, it doesn't last. I've been a part of at least three of four such clubs that never saw anything beyond the second chapter. So, I would not agree to the ad that said, it was the first time something like this was being done in Chennai, but that in no way takes away the beauty of a supper club. First things first - the food cost. So,  if you pay Rs. 1500 to a restaurant, about Rs 600-750 goes towards the cost of food. Not the KFC or other QSR, fast food types where it could be a lot lower, but I'm talking about a restaurant. In a supper club/pop up dinners etc, about 70-80% normally goes into the food costs, so there is a real value for money there. Its done by people absolutely passionate about the food, so no chef-by-mistake risks. But there are other risks - unlike a restaurant, if something goes wrong, they are not in a great position to correct stuff, but then anything has risks. Like finding hair in your food in a great restaurant.

Why I absolutely wanted to attend the Supper Club is because I felt they have a real chance of making this work in Chennai. A nice network via the CFG. A lot of chef friends. A lot of amateur chef waiting to make a mark. A lot of passionate foodies with a love for cooking who can showcase their stuff. Why I believe this might work is that instead of trying to make a supper club, this appears to be a platform for supper club. Fingers crossed.

Now, this is how the first event went. A 7 course meal cooked by two chefs who work at Indian Accent, Delhi, touted as the Best Restaurant in India where apparently you need to make a reservation at least 3 days in advance. Chef Vignesh Ramachandran and Chef Tushar Sood.

Tables were set nicely. In the limited space, effort was taken to make it look good. That set the tone. And like any supper club, the company is as important as the food and usually thats what makes it great. Here all of those rules were followed. Out of the 10 people who came, I knew only one other person, so it made for interesting conversation. While we were waiting for the food to start coming, we were served a little amuse-bouche, little balls of deep fried cheese. I didn't have a good feeling about the food when I had fried cheese for amuse-bouche.

The soup that followed erased all such doubts. A fresh watermelon Gazpacho was a great start to the evening. Watermelon 3 ways was the name and it had healthy doses of cheese, watermelon, balsamic balls and of course the Gazpacho. What I absolutely loved was the quantity of gazpacho. It was small, so it didn't feel like soup, but a like a light starter. Light and yummy, it set the tone for the next course. Fruits. Fruits? In a 7 course supper club meal? I started having doubts again, but one bite into the watermelon and the tongue had fizz. Fizz? Fruits and fizz? I thought my tongue was crazy and bit into the grapes. Fizz again. Whoa. The chef came out and explained that they fizzed up the fruits. Loved it and loved the creativity.

Then came the next two courses, one by one of course! Pun intended. A gnocchi that was a stunner. With the right amount of sauce, micro greens and cheese, this was an excellent dish. Though I'm not a big fan (at least not yet) of runny egg yolk, here it was yummy! I guess there is a way to cook (or not cook) the yolk too. This was followed by their take on Fish n Chips. This for me was a miss. Fish n Chips is usually fried right? Here it was baked. And chips? There was no chips, but instead a two little pieces of ready made potato papad. That for me in a supper club is an absolute no-no. The fish tasted great, but the dish a whole was miss for me.

Then two absolute winners. First the perfectly prepared and cooked Quail. Oh my God. With figs and a little potato patty, this was the clear winner and was absolutely yum. This was followed by the lamb with caramelised onions and together it was lip smacking.

And then beetroot for dessert. Beetroot? At best, I thought the way to have beetroot sweet was to make a halwa out of it. This was close. He stuffed sweet beetroot into a puff pasty and plated it with some ice cream and custard. All plated were licked clean!!!

There was service issues, but that is a part of most supper clubs as the tables are not usually manned by professionals. Given the quality of the food and the conversation at the tables, no one really remembered anything about service.

Priced at Rs. 1200 for non veg and Rs. 1100 for vegetarians, I thought this was brilliant. More importantly, I have a gut feeling that this may really take off this time. Might be slow, but may take off. And if it does, that would be amazing to the food scene in Chennai.

One more round of this is happening on the 14th and 15th of this month. You can call 9841445450 if you want to attend one of them. 

There are sometimes I wish I had my camera with me, but there are times when I am absolutely kicking myself for not taking an extra step and borrowing a cam for shooting food. Caperberry, tucked away inside Fava, inside UB city terrace, is one such place. Ranked the No. 1 restaurant in various ratings for a few years and taking a huge shot after Garry of Masterchef Australia fame visited, this has been on my wish list for quite sometime. Missing out on it in the last restaurant week when an affordable version is available, four of us landed on Sunday for lunch when we had nothing to do in Bangalore! A bill of Rs. 6500 for four did not leave us disappointed. If four people ordered four desserts without sharing, that is quite something!

So, we started off not so good, though. We saw two interesting soups and two of decided to split the Chicken, walnut with celery soup. This was the molecular gastronomy types, aka, minuscule portions of the solids with generous broth. The flavour did not make it, mainly because the chicken in a microscopic sausage form wasn't enough for the plate. Maybe if we didn't split the soup, the solids might have been enough for the broth.

But then on, the food was going from good to great! The first to arrive was the lamb shank with tiger prawns, called the Surf n Turf. While the surf n turf, in places like Miami denotes Beef with Lobsters, lamb and prawns were not a bad combination. The lamb was literally pull apart with fantastic flavours while the tiger prawns were kick ass!!! Thats the dish I was eyeing, but our friend took it and gladly for us, she shared! Then my dish came - beef cooked medium with asparagus, sauce, spinach and potato parcels. The beef was also pull apart really. It was cooked medium and just kept tearing off. Then my adventurous friend's rabbit! Whoa. Lovely would be an understatement, but the best dish was my temporarily-vegetarian-friend's saffron ravioli! Dishes like these show us that vegetarian food is not being done good justice in India and there is so much more to veggie food.

And then all four of us wanted dessert. Each. So we had our way and had one. Each. The minute I saw churros on the menu, I wanted it, but the waiter said that it was a deconstructed churros. I wanted it even more. And loved it! It was powdered and flat churros with the perfect flavour with lots of chocolate sauce to dip. The live tiramisu was even more awesome. Belgian chocolate with orange mousse was excellent, but the best dish again went to my temporarily-vegetarian friend, a dish whose name I forgot, but flavour will linger along forever!!!!

Yeah, the bill was Rs 6500 for all of us, but it was better than most 2k plus buffets available all around Chennai and Bangalore. I would rather have this than have unlimited mediocre food!!!!

Caperberry is on the terrace at UB City Mall, Bangalore, with access from the Fava Restaurant. 

I was intrigued. I was a little sad too. When Taj invited me to their new dining experience, the Rooftop Alfresco at the Taj Clubhouse, I presumed that Kefi, one of the best roof top restaurants in Chennai, was coming to a close and was being replaced! Fellow foodies shared the anguish! But thankfully, that wasn't the case. The outdoor seating area of Kefi, now has more options to eat from and now as a new avatar, the Rooftop Alfresco! Being open from 530 in the evening, it can turn out to be a great spot for catching up after work and with very few 5 star offerings like this in Chennai, Taj is aiming to fill that void!!!

Open to public from the 6th of Feb, we had a nice sneak peak! Dinner started with a wine for the 'drinkers' and mocktails for the good boys! The chef made fun of us because that night, all ladies had the wine and the gentlemen were the teetotallers!

The mezze platter that came in was signature Kefi. Accompanied by some wonderful pita bread, the platter had yummy hummus, an awesome spanakopita, falafel and a salad and made a great starter. Next came the dish of the day, which unfortunately turned out to be a veg dish, so we, carnivores only got a bite each. It was called Gnudis ( we had some fun trying to pronounce it. The G is silent). Whoa, it was heavenly. This was followed by a nice wrap and a very different tasting pizza. A fantastic Key Lime Pie closed the dinner for us!

With the cool breeze and being seated right next the pool made for a great ambiance. Wonder how it will be in the peak of Chennai heat, but barring those two months, this should be a great place for the rest of the year. I saw an Istanbul Burger on the menu (and as you can imagine, a little disappointed not to have tasted that) but my friend and me are planning to try this out!!! 

Food festivals in Chennai are getting more and more exotic and Taj is leading the charge, I guess. After a fantastic food pairing with perfumes with the Master Perfumer, Nicholas at Prego, the Taj Clubhouse with a fantastic rooftop Mediterranean restaurant, Kefi, is dabbling with Tunisian food. I've never had Tunisian cuisine before and apparently they discovered Couscous, so I was quite intrigued when invited by Taj for dinner. On a Wednesday evening, the place had more than ten tables tables, mostly on the deck side, filled, so that is a great sign that Chennai is warming up to good food!

Kefi, being a fancy place, always gives you an amuse-bouche. Everytime I go there, I am quite excited to see what that is. Given, its not a great deal of food, but sometimes, the tiny things make a huge impression. A little beetroot wrapped around a nice goat cheese, I believe it was! The starters came along and for once, I loved the veg starters more than the sea food one. Called the Solanum Brik, this was a nice creamy spiced potato stuffed in pastry. Maybe I liked it because I believe the potato is the eighth wonder of the world. Not chicken, not beef, but potato. The chef here had it bang on!

This was followed by a fantastic soup, a very different one. Called the Lablabi, made almost entirely with chick peas, this had a tinge of garlic and a nice piece of chicken, this was a very different flavour. Bland and intense at the same time, so it was lovely. The vegetarians had a nice looking main course that I didn't try, but the chicken was fantastic. Again, it was different. A nicely cooked chicken leg stuffed with couscous and served with some eighth wonder of the world! Loved it. Dessert was a 'Tunisian' variant of Baklava, which had flavours of Rose and Dates. Tunisian inspired would be the best way to describe it.

I love Kefi and it holds a very special place in my heart, but its at times like this that my love for Kefi, goes up a notch. When they decide to go different and experiment with lesser known cuisines and flavours. It also proves that much as food might seem different, the similarities are much more. Food is a great way to understand cultures!

The food fest is on till the 27th of June at Kefi, Taj Club house and a typical meal here should cost about Rs. 3000 for two. 

If you remember (of course, you don't, so you could read it here), I had written, some time back, that the flavours at California Pizza Kitchen in Bangalore, left me confused. Being a big bunch of people going to a restaurant helps, because, I was able to taste so many dishes and having the chef next to us and explain it all, has, finally, taken the confusion out! California Pizza Kitchen or CPK, is not just a pizza place - it is positioned as somewhere below a fine dine restaurant and the flavours that left me confused last time was because, I was expecting an American Style Pizza, but there is heavy mid eastern and asian flavours. So, this is not a pizzeria, but a restaurant. Once that confusion is taken care of, your expectations and your experiences will not have too much of a gap.

The foccaccia bread with garlic lemon dip was excellent, but if there is one thing that was excellent in both Bangalore and here was the spicy chicken supreme. It is not very spicy, but it is quite tangy and I wrote about it without knowing the name on my report of the Bangalore CPK. The cucumber green apple drink was super refreshing and after the crazy drive to reach CPK, it was a very nice thing to send into your body! While I did not fancy the Char Grilled Chicken, the quesadilla (really, what is a quesadilla doing in a pizzeria, oh yeah, this is not a pizzeria) and a thai chicken salad, the lettuce wrap was quite excellent and with lots of meat options, it is worth a shot. They are of the make-your-own-wrap type, so you can stuff as much or as little you want!

Finally, the pizzas came and I liked all of them, especially the crust that made CPK famous, the pre baked thin crispy crust! We had a chicken fajita and a tostada pizza in the thin crust and a classic bbq chicken pizza (called the California pizza) in the regular crust and all the pizzas were quite nice, so having Pizza as their middle name was quite justified. Honestly, I did not like any of the pastas, so I won't talk much about it, but if I must, one was like Asian noodles (not bad, but did not fit in with the rest of the cuisine and a quite OK tasting red sauce penne).

Even if you don't have space, get the strawberry cheese cake! It is creamy, smooth, oreo crusty, tasty and filling all at once. Excellent stuff. We also had a reasonably good tiramisu, but after that cheese cake, I could not taste anything else, so I even packed one for home!

So, CPK has finally come to Chennai and like I said, if you get what this place is all about (I repeat, this is not a pizzeria, but a restaurant which happens to have Pizza as it's middle name), then you will like what they serve. Must have's are the spicy chicken supreme if you like tangy, the lettuce wraps, at least two pizzas and the strawberry cheese cake. The place is pricy, so a meal for two will set you back by Rs. 1500 or so. Pizzas are priced around Rs. 700, desserts at about Rs. 350.

CPK is at the Phoenix Market, Velacherry.

'Don't judge a restaurant by it's buffet' is something I learnt long back. I have been to places with pathetic buffets, but otherwise good food and I usually don't do buffets in places with exotic cuisines! Of course, things have changed in a lot of restaurants recently! But there was this offer on snapdeal - a lunch buffet worth Rs 550 for Rs 350 and I thought why not! Apparently many people did the same thing and so a big bunch of us were at Kryptos to check out their lunch buffet!!

Disappointing is the only word I can think of!

Now, I love Greek cuisine. Even a year or so back, I have had some wonderful dishes at this very restaurant - some superb souvlaki and gyros and baklava. Not that I expected any of those on the buffet, but the buffet was disappointing beyond taste! The salad bar was the only saving grace - if you like salads that is! If you don't, then, well, you might come out cursing the restaurant! The hummus was excellent and a couple of starters served on the table were decent. The soup was bad! The main courses were bad - the lamb was cold, the chicken was the only thing edible on the buffet, the beef was like chewing leather (no, I have not chewed leather before, but I am pretty sure this is how it would be), the bake was alright and the so on.

Oh, there was another saving grace, in fact more than a saving grace - the desserts. Though there was no baklava, the five or so desserts that were there were all very very nice.

I won't pay Rs 550 for this buffet and now I won't pay Rs 350 either for the buffet. Luckily for me, my friend paid for the lunch! Do yourself a favour, cross the road and eat at Tuscana. The money goes to the same owner as he owns both, but you will feel so much better with the food. Or, even better, go to Kryptos and order a-la-carte, if you want to try good cypriot cuisine! Get some gyros, souvlaki, spanakopita and baklava and have proper lunch or dinner there - you might not regret that!

Kryptos is a good restaurant with a bad buffet!

Once in a while you come across a place that your blog misses!!!! It is almost like a sin if the food blog does not have a place like that. Shiraaz is one such place! The first time I went there was almost 3 years back, but for some strange reason, I have not documented it and till today I have not figured out why! But here it comes, finally!

Shiraaz is an Iranian restaurant, run by an Iranian family inside the Cholamandalam Artist Village premises. On Sundays, like most places, they run a buffet! The setting is relaxing, though during summer, it might roast you! Outdoor, amidst plants and cats and trees, a relaxing setting that can seat about 30-40 people and a small indoor that can seat a maximum of four people is all that the cafe is made of. Cutlery is simple, food is in hot cases and service is by two ladies and the owners are inside explaining the dishes to you! This is a place for a slightly different palate, so if you are expecting a Mediterranean Chilly Chicken or something on those lines, you will be disappointed. Food is rather bland, but flavourful with spices, so beware! We met a couple there, who we saw after almost two years and they were raving about how Shiraaz is a second home for them. Other than them and another couple, the rest were all foreigners, so clearly, the food is aimed at them!

As soon as we were seated we were served a nice sorbet in a large glass! Perfect for summer, but it served another purpose - palate cleanser between courses, but you won't really need one! We started off with a superb soup - made of dill, lentils and a whole lot of others and was even named Dil Lentil Dhal etc etc soup! A bowl of thick curd was right next to it and we had to put a dollop of curd on the soup and then have it!

Then we filled our plate with the first course from the buffet - grilled chicken, chicken roll, fish n prawn bake, hummus with crispy pita bread, egg scramble and some salads. The hummus here is an awesome hummus - easily the best in town and, as the friendly owner puts it, 'as authentic as the ingredients will allow'! The chicken roll was very nice that day and all of the foods had a slightly different flavour to it.

The second set of dishes wowed us - there was this orange peel rice, brilliant would be an understatement, a dill rice and a saffron rice and there was a naan. The naan was a blot on the wonderful carbo component of the meal - it was hard, flavourless and pretty tasteless, but the rices more than made up for it. To pair them, there was a roasted plum chicken, which was excellent, a superb prawn and fish gravy, and some pretty average herbed lamb and a prawn biriyani. Two helpings each and we were nearing our stomach capacity! Normally I would have called this a poor tomato rice, but now that I understand that biriyani is a world dish that is customised to the location, I am just going to say that I preferred the other rice varieties on display.

We took a break to ease out some space and then went for the short dessert course - it has just five desserts - a kulfi, a carrot cake, another cake, a dessert called strawberry magic and of course some fruits. All five were brilliant and it was quite different to see quality over quantity. We finished off with some spiced hot black tea!

Overall, it was a brilliant meal. But if you had to keep one thing in mind - get your backside here by 1 or 1:15 PM max, so that you get the food hot. The buffet almost does not change, so unless you liked the food so much to go back, don't expect a new set of dishes the next week. Chat up with the friendly gentleman who is willing to tell you stories about the origin of some foods and praises his wife for serving up 'Iranian Home Food for the Indian'

4/5 and this place reminds me of a wonderful Mediterranean restaurant that shut down - CEDARS!!!

Shiraaz Cafe is open till 8 PM is what I was told and it is located inside the Cholamandalam Artist Village premises on ECR! Its the building with red walled compound and should be easy to find!