All you have to do is wait! Yes. It's that simple, I guess. First we had one, then the same thing happened twice and now we have two festivals every six months! I am talking about Food Weeks and now Restaurant Week India, the original, is back! This time also powered by Ola, so you can get picked up and dropped back as part of the deal. Wonderful places at a fraction of the price, so only thing left is for them to physically take the food and put it in your mouth.

Having been to most of the restaurants on the list, I was excited to see a few new places and I thought I will try Sunset grill at the Westin! It was cloudy and there was a chance that we may have to dine inside, but the rains were kind and put off plans till a little later. And that is how we were able to dine at this beautiful open air restaurant. The ambiance is beautiful to say the least and the beautiful weather made it a perfect evening out.

The menu is interesting. No single cuisine, but anything that is grilled and maybe sometimes not. So the menu is a good mix of finger food and sizzlers! As part of the RWI menu, you get a starter, a main course and dessert. I was surprised to see Ceviche on the menu! Don't remember seeing that anywhere in Chennai so that was my first choice, a Prawn Avocado and Orange ceviche, while my friend asked for crab cakes. The Ceviche was wonderful. Tangy, spicy, juicy and with quite a few pieces of prawns, so hearty as well. Served in a glass that is deceptive, as you keep digging, you seem to keep getting more! The crab cakes were blah! Oh, the bread basket that they serve is awesome. With a soft pesto stuffed bread being the best, the basket is beautiful.

We got an excellent dish for main course and my friend's choice was bang on - a Chermoula shaved Tenderloin. Nice and smoky (being served on the sizzler) and parsley flavours coming through, and also for a tenderloin that was cooked more than medium, it was soft and juicy. The chicken dish, I ordered was blah. Both were served with rice and beautiful potato wedges.

Dessert was wonderful. Both of them! A beautiful red velvet and mascarpone cake that was soft and almost like a red velvet take on the Tiramisu, while the Coconut and Jaggery Creme Brûlée was yummy. The bland side that was served with the creme brûlée was the perfect balancer for the sweet dish.

Priced at Rs. 950 plus taxes + Rs. 60 convenience fee for a 3 course meal with two Ola Prime rides to and from the destination (capped at Rs. 150 each way), this is a steal. Lunch is slightly cheaper (this restaurant is not open for lunch, but some others in the list are.) You can book below.

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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. 

My colleagues who travel to Bangalore more often that I do, have been bitten by the 'Eating Out' bug. Since they don't have a Bangalore Foodie blog, they have started eating out in new places and when I go to Bangalore, I am told what places to try! Ha. Yes. So this time, a couple of days before I went there, they had eaten at this place, they called ESCAPE and were dying to show off their find! So we landed at Indira Nagar 100 feet road and took a left somewhere and I was dragged into a small boutique hotel! As I learned later, the name was Bricklane Grill, a rooftop restaurant inside Escape Hotel.

I loved the outdoor setting! It takes you on a white holiday and with a swimming pool located right at the edge, the ambiance has been created with a lot of thought! Being a weeknight, it was rather empty when we went and so we got seated in a very comfortable couch right next to the swimming pool! They looked disappointed that we didn't order alcohol and we had a couple of hours to kill before taking our transport back to Chennai!

We started of with a very good, but slightly oily, chicken wrapped in spinach starter. This was followed by an excellent grilled chicken with a super smooth mash that we all loved! There was set meal with chicken tikka gravy and naans that was very average and had nothing to write home about. The pizza was very interesting on the board; a spicy chicken with sour cream, but while the chicken was very spicy, the cream wasn't very sour and so though we liked the pizza, it wasn't what we expected. We finished off with an excellent value for money dessert; a platter for Rs. 125. Apparently they had an offer running and we were lucky! Among the four, the lemon cheese cake was a kicker, followed by the chocolate with strawberry compote, while the tiramisu and the mousse cake were good too!

We paid Rs. 1730 for the three of us and were pretty satisfied with the meal. The ambiance here is the clear winner and though the food doesn't match the ambiance, it serves as a very good grill with a variety of food to choose from!

3.5/5

Bricklane Grill is located inside the Escape Spa Hotel at Indira Nagar, off the 100 feet road. 

My friend's first reaction was, "Why aren't there places like this in Chennai?" While the three of us had varying opinions, the one thing we agreed upon is that Chennai might never get a place like this. We blamed it on the weather! Honestly, if I didn't look out from the sides of this terrace cafe, I might have mistaken the ambiance to a cafe in Greece!!!! And I actually missed my D90 that day because my phone couldn't capture the beauty of this terrace cafe!!!! After our varying points of view, we settled down to ordering our food and our primary reason for getting into a cafe was sit and have a round of business discussions! This place fit the bill perfectly!

So to get lunch out of the way, I asked for a grilled chicken with stuffed cheese, my friends ordered a chicken burger and a vegetarian lasagna. "Vegetarian. Really?" I asked the guy who is a connoisseur of biriyani! "Yes. And you are not getting any of it," he said. As it turned out, I regretted that comment as the lasagna turned out to be the best dish of the day! And I was given one bite and not a morsel more! My grilled chicken was a little dry for my liking, but the flavours made up for it, largely. A little juicier and I wouldn't have had to gaze longingly at the lasagna being gulped down! The chicken burger was quite nice and largely juicier than my grilled chicken, so I had the least tasty dish!

After an hour of chatting, it was time for tea and biscuits, so we got a little 'fondue' and tea for one of friends, while the two of us were happy with water. The 'fondue' is very misleading because the dish is just cookies with chocolate sauce! Not a fondue by any stretch of imagination, but the cookie was superb, so the name didn't matter. Nothing to talk about the tea!

Service was excellent, friendly attentive and non intrusive, which together makes a great Greek Styled Cafe!!! Located in Koramangla, 5th block, above Mainland China.

Wow! Two restaurants that I am not very fond of, surprised me this week! I had written about Focaccia and now its The Crown! Writing about the The Crown, is very difficult, but quite easy! Yes, the contradiction comes from the restaurant itself! With easily the best outdoor seating in Chennai, set amidst a roof top water pool, brilliant lighting in the outdoor area, the restaurant has all the ambiance to be a wonderful restaurant, except the rather forgettable indoor. And, sadly, so is the food! So, sometimes, its like a one line say! "Great ambiance, average food." For a food lover, though it is not so easy! If you are particular about the food and believe that the ambiance is to enhance the food, then more often than not, you will be disappointed! My previous trysts with The Crown, both invited and welcomed, has always ended that way!

For the first time, all of us came out feeling that the food was excellent. It was so simple that it was excellent! They have flown down a Punjabi chef from Delhi and a chat with him revealed that he had to fly back and bring all the spices with him because he didn't find what he wanted in Chennai! A punjabi will definitely be a better judge of the food, but as guests eating Punjabi food, we all quite liked it.

The meal started off with sweet lassi and 4 starters. Lasooni paneer and a mushroom palak kebab were served first and though not a big fan of paneer, I quite liked the paneer, while the mushroom kebab was excellent. The badami chicken kebab was excellent too and was followed by another excellent sheekh kebab which finished off the round of starters. All of us were starting to get exhausted with the starters and nothing was left on the plate!

Before the main course was served, the chef presented us a platter of pickles, which he was proud to say that he brought from home. Without realising that the main course was yet to come, we started eating the pickles. This was followed by four gravies served with a platter of Indian breads. I liked two of the gravies and didn't like two of them. The chicken masala and the Lamb gravy were both excellent and I forgot the name of the other two! I also sneaked in a paratha with the outstanding pickles! I wish there was one aloo paratha and curd just for the pickles!!! We finished off the meal with a simple kheer!

Chef Sweety Singh, who has worked with a number of 5 star hotels, including ITC in Delhi, is now a consultant chef flying around the country promoting home style Punjabi cuisine! Without being intrusive, he showed us his version of Punjabi home style food and took pride in saying that his cooking is 'unadulterated to suit the market.' So finally, we quite enjoyed the meal at The Crown!

A meal for two should cost you about Rs. 1500 without drinks and this food festival is on till the 9th of this month! The Crown is the roof top restaurant at Residency Towers, T. Nagar.