During the epic night in Mumbai where a Mumbaikar took this Chennaivasi on a 6 hour food trip, a number of things stood out. One of them was the bun maska. Dipped lovingly in chai and bit with love and chai, this is one dish that makes you believe that you are the most hard working guy in the world and that the bun maska is your only respite.

So when bun maska was advertised, Chai Nasta became a must-visit place. So after a hardworking day three hardworking guys, for whom the world keeps wronging and bun maska was the only respite, landed there well into the evening. Yours truly was obviously one of them.

Well, it is a pure vegetarian restaurant, something I found out only when I landed there. Else there is a chance that we might have gone elsewhere. Anyway, now that we were there, the two others ordered elachi tea, chilly cheese toast and chilly paneer. I asked for the bun maska and the aloo tikki chat. Later on we added one paneer roll to our list.

This place is all about the bun maska. Yes, the chilly paneer was pretty good with chunks of paneer in a tangy gravy, the roll was blah, the aloo tikki was a nice as it should be, but only one thing stood out. The bun maska and the chai. OK, that was two things, yes. The first bun maska was plain and when we asked for a repeat order, we got the one with jam. Retrospectively, I would ditch the jam and go for the plain. A nice soft, sweet fruity bun, toasted (and tossed in oil or butter, I think), was this beautiful old time comfort food during the era when croissants were unheard of. In most of Chennai, it was always the marie biscuits that got dipped in tea, but there were places where bun was dipped in tea too. Mosques, potti kadais (street tea shops) and the likes. The elachi tea (cardamom tea) was pretty good and as sweet as the erstwhile teas when sugar wasn’t a world killer. Chai Nasta has recreated that in a slightly more modern tea kadai setting in a posh locality, right next to The Raintree hotel, St. Mary’s road, Alwarpet.

Our bill was Rs. 1000 for the three of us.

via Blogger http://ift.tt/2n1qMbD

I'm starting off 2017 with the most luxurious meal that I've had in a while! Yes, sorry for the hiatus, but I'm back and going to be bringing some travel food stuff over the next month. Back to the royal meal.

An invite from ITC to Royal Vega was the only way I was going to go to Royal Vega. I can't afford Royal Vega and I certainly won't be spending close to about 5-6k for two for a vegetarian meal anytime soon. The opulence of the place is in your face! Cloches that weigh a ton and a tray with condiments that you will need two hands to lift with, are small samples of a decor that been chosen and set up with a great deal of eye for detail. With a separate kitchen and a separate set of utensils that are not shared with any other restaurant in the hotel, the place is truly honestly vegetarian and therefore possibly the only truly vegetarian fine dine place in Chennai.

While I am a hard core non vegetarian, I understand flavours and many a times the lack of meat doesn't alter my impression of a restaurant as long as I relate to those flavours. With Royal Vega? Read on.....

The ginger mocktail with star anise was fabulous. So fabulous that it, along with the beetroot cutlet stood out as the best dishes of the day. Unlike most thali meals around the city, everything is not served at one go. You are served the food over three courses with each course giving you two dishes and a type of roti. Now the ingredients are some of the best and they have taken extreme pains to get the best. Be it from Afghanistan or Gujarat or Spain, every ingredient like hing and saffron and even the peas are flown from the best producers.

After the first course, the rest of the meal was a nice meal, but I was unable to appreciate it. The gravies were nice and the breads were great and it was wonderful meal, but nothing stood out in terms of special flavours. These were the same flavours, but made with exotic top of the line ingredients! Royal Vega doesn't claim to create new flavours, but to give you flavour from homes in truly fine dining ambiance. That, has been done to perfection. As for me, I am still learning to differentiate good gravies from good gravies made with top notch ingredients presented in a luxurious decor with super premium cutlery! I am yet to get there!

Royal Vega is royal and truly lives up to its name! Just that I am not the person who it has been created for and I am sure a lot more people will be able to appreciate and be willing to pay for it. 

After having some fantastic vegetarian foods around the city in both pure veg and in common restaurants, I am planning to make a visit to at least one veg restaurant every month! From a personal point of view, I want to understand vegetarian foods a lot more! While there are some fantastic foods that are vegetarian, only a handful of pure veg restaurants, I believe, do full justice to vegetarian foods. And I am out to find out who they are!

First stop that comes to mind is Little Italy. I remember their Nungambakkam outlet from a visit about 5 years ago when friends landed there and I joined them. Food was good, but didn't entice me to go back!

The Little Italy in Besant Nagar, though has a setting completely different from Nungambakkam. It is eclectic, classy and on Monday with current Chennai's beautiful weather, it was excellent. Particularly loved their vintage car parked in the open space! Wish they had seating there.

There were hits and misses. Let me lay out the misses first and we can move on! Pesto Risotto and Creamy white sauce Pasta were disastrous! Among the starters, the bread with corn dip was equally disastrous. The dip was way too dilute for me and the pasta and risotto were simply careless.

But I am going to focus on the dishes that were great! The crispy potato skins were simply excellent. I believe potatoes are the eight wonder of the world, but looks like potato skins should take that position! It had the saltiness with the right amount to heat and a dip to match. It was fantastic.

The stuffed mushroom were another dish that we finished up in total. Yummy! The Penne in Red Sauce was a nice warm pasta dish. The sauce was nice and not dilute and with the hint of garlic and generous olives, it was a very very nice pasta dish!

The best dishes of the days were the desserts! We had three desserts and all of them were yummy. The Tiramisu! Now, this may be the only Italian Restaurant I know which has two versions of Tiramisu. A classic one and then their version with Vanilla cream instead of Mascarpone. We had their version and it was excellent. The vanilla cream was a great replacement for the mascarpone and it was a dish well executed. This was followed by the Chocolate Bomb, a nice muddy, gooey, chocolate inside a chocolate shell served with Vanilla Ice cream. And a nice fresh jiggly wiggly panna cotta with fresh fruits!

A typical meal for two will cost about Rs. 1500.

Don't want to travel all the way to Besant Nagar? We've tied up with Dine In to get all of these to your house! Use the coupon code CFLI in the link and get Rs. 100 off* on your first order via Dine In at Little Italy! Coupon code will be valid from 24th June 2016.


*Terms and conditions of dinein.in will apply. This is an offer brought by a third party and Chennai Foody or its team cannot be held responsible for the outcome or consequences of the transaction between the reader and DINEIN.IN.

This is going to be a tricky one to write about! When I first got the email with a complimentary meal for two at the Entree, E Hotel buffet, I didn't read too much into it. What was I going to do in a vegetarian buffet? I like vegetarian food, but a buffet for me? But when a friend of mine said that she quite liked the food at E Hotel, I was intrigued. So fixed a date and off we went! The lobby is quite nice, though small and the restaurant is right at the lobby! It was supposed to be 'World Cuisine' and I was looking forward to it!

The spread was disappointing. I haven't been to any other vegetarian buffet, so I don't know what the norm is, but the spread was by no means representing world cuisine. The soup and starters were served at the table and the soup was wonderful! The bread that came with the soup was bad! Out of the two starters (I believe it changes everyday), the sesame gobi was excellent and the dhal kebab was outright bad. With a completely mixed experience, we went for the buffet and quite like almost all of the few dishes that were there. The rajma chawal was quite lovely and of the three gravies, I liked two.

The desserts were rather sad and did not have anything special, but the chef treated us to their 'Restaurant Special', the tiramisu and a homemade hazelnut chocolate. The tiramisu wasn't great, but the hazelnut chocolate was outstanding. The buffet is priced at Rs. 750/- nett. Small spread, few excellent items and a couple of outrageous items with a super friendly service in a wonderful ambiance. It is a great choice for pure vegetarians and Jains and they have a party hall with pure vegetarian foods. From a non vegetarian perspective, I don't see why I have to go back, but I can't talk from the vegetarian perspective. So, that's why the confusion about recommending it.

E Hotel is at the Express Avenue Mall with both a dedicated portico and an entry from the mall.

At The Great Kebab Factory, you make one decision - veg or non veg and they take care of the rest. At Rajdhani you don't even make that choice! No menu, no ordering, no nothing. Sit and they will serve you. But I came out of Rajdhani with an overwhelming feeling of wanting to go back there, to a vegetarian restaurant!

Tables are already set with the thali plates. And then, one after another, after another, after another, phew, they keep filling your plate. And you keep gulping food down. And they repeat and you repeat. And they repeat. And you repeat. The problem is when you stop repeating. After 4 rounds of roti and an unwritten competition between the waiter and me as to who is going to stop first, I lost. The waiter looks at me with a sad face. "Sir, ek aur lelo." "Bus, bhaiya, full hogaya." "Sir, ek aur. Kuch nahi hoga. Sirf ek." And the fifth roti landed on my plate.

But little did I know that rice and khichidi were yet to come, so when I declared that I did not want either, the roti was back. "Sir, aap rice nahi khatha, ek aur roti lelo." The only other place where I was force fed was at Souther Spice, Taj Coromandel and even there, some of it was charged. Here, it is all all you can eat, unlimited thali, which includes unlimited bottled water apparently, because I was not charged for it. There is no point in mentioning what all I was served and frankly, I don't know most of the names. But it suffices to know that you will served everything from sweet to salad to main course to dessert and a drink too. And the written down price included the money they were paying the government, the mall, their salaries, under the table payments if any and everything. The price written as I entered was Rs. 405. The bill broke down that 405 into cost, tax etc and I paid what I saw. Simple. Lovely.

If this place served meat, I would have given it 5/5. The food is like home cooked food and is not exotic, the experience is!

I had it at Phoenix Market City, but they are located in quite a few places including Express Avenue. 

The photo is not from Saravana Bhavan.

In Chennai, very few restaurant chains are debated so much. Lots of Chennaites, think this place is crap, a whole bunch of others swear by this place. But in the preceding week, three incidents happened and in two of them, I had to have lunch here. First. My friend who came down from the US was telling me that his and his wife's families wanted to go out for dinner to a 'nice place' and I casually asked him where they were going and the answer was Saravana Bhavan. WHAT? People go to Saravana Bhavan for a nice family get-together dinner? Really? 

Second, we had a business meeting and three people flew down from Bombay. Two of them landed first and the the third guy landed after 3 hours. The first two were reasonably adamant that they wanted to eat 'Only at Saravana Bhavan. ' While we were having lunch there, the third guy calls and when we asked him if we can get him some sandwich or something to eat, he immediate reply was - 'I am in Chennai guys, why will I eat a sandwich? Please get me dosa and idly from Saravana Bhavan'.

Three. Ditto. One guy came from Bombay and wanted to eat only there, so my colleague took him there. He came back two weeks later (last week) and asked for packed lunch from Saravana Bhavan. And I had to eat that, too. 

But if you look at most online food forums based out of Chennai, almost everybody complains that HSB is way to pricy. So, when I had the dosa and idly onsite, I thought they were quite nice. Quite pricy, yes, but quite nice. The packed lunch was meh, but the guy said, 'Doc, you must eat the lunch at the restaurant. It is way better.' I don't know how much better, sambar rice, curd rice, lemon rice with a pickle can get, but that's the way it is. I mean, if South Indian families are going there for a 'nice' dinner, well......speechless. 

Service at the A/C restaurants are a little more cultured, whereas in the non A/C areas, they are doing you a favour by serving you. They are giving you the privilege to pay them and taste their food. 

Bottom line, it serves very good dosa and idly, I am biased with variety rice and 'Chinese' in HSB, so my opinion does not count, but well, I won't eat those there unless I don't have an option. At times, I have had chaat there and it is OK. The badam halwa is excellent. But, I don't think I can ever review this chain properly. For that matter, I don't think I can review any 'multi-cuisine' food chains properly! Is there anybody who has done justice writing about this place? I really want to learn. 

Dasaprakash was a landmark that not too many Chennaites will forget, but strangely for me, the mention of Dasaprakash takes my memories to Mysore because during my childhood, the annual Ooty, Mysore, Bangalore holiday had the Mysore stop at Dasaprakash and I still remember the crisp masala dosa. Briefly there was a mini Dasaprakash in Kilpauk which folded off soon and to see the Dasaprakash in a whole new 'fine dine' avatar at EA mall was quite overwhelming. From English speaking staff to an elevated dining area within the restaurant to the expansive window side seating; everything was new about the place.

And I had a few grouses as well. But the food, was excellent. Mysore Masala dosa, pongal and sambar vada was our order and I quite liked them all, but I must add that I am used to a different 'Mysore Masala' and this one was a simple masala with lots of podi inside. Tasted good nevertheless. I am not a big fan of pongal, OK, I quite hate it, but I was told that it was good. I then tasted it and it was edible for me and 'edible pongal' coming from me, that must have been quite good. Sambar vada was well.....sambar vada.

Ok, now the grouses. I understand a restaurant serving plain dosa and not having masala dosa, but here, you get masala dosa, but no plain dosa. Ditto with sambar vada - no plain vada. The place is quite pricy, but I get that, especially with the beautifully done interiors, an attempt to create a 'fine dine' vegetarian concept, but I don't get why you can't serve plain dosa or plain vada. Beats me. 

Service was polite and attentive and the restaurant is massive. I don't know what the cover size, but it looked like it could seat about 150 and inside a mall, that is quite large. A meal for two will cost about 1k. 

3.5/5 for me. 

So after one Arabian Multicuisine Restaurant, my next stop was the 'Home of the Classics', vegetarian multicuisine restaurant! If you think that sounds absurd (the specialty multicuisine part, no my eating part), then I explained that in my previous post. OK, just to refresh, I think Chennai, which moved from the multi cuisine to specialty cuisine (not entirely, but it did move), is slowly moving back to the multi cuisine concepts, so even 'specialty' restaurants are adding some Indo Chinese and North Indian foods to their menu to tap the market. None of these are really upmarket specialty places but ones that cater to the 'family dining' concept that even MNCs like McD have adopted for India.

OK, enough gyaan. We were here on a Sunday evening at about 830 and waited for about 20 minutes for a table. If we came in at 930, we would have gotten a table without waiting as friends who came in late found out. I wanted to stick to the South Indian 'classics' as they call it, but one dish that I really wanted to try, the Gramathukootanchoru, is available only for lunch and I really wanted to try that. So we asked for a Vazhapoo Vada,  Krishnavilasam special masala dosa, while the mom wanted plain rice with vathakozambhu, the wife wanted Rava Idly and I also wanted to try their Appam and Veg stew.

Thus far the food was good, but it is was not excellent by any measure. The vathakozhambu was the only disappointment for me in an otherwise decent  meal. We finished off with a portion of Adapradaman which was a little too watery for me. The ambiance was good, but contemporary, while I expected a more classic ambiance and the service was quite good and friendly, but it was not attentive or pro-active. Some training will go a long way as they seem to have gotten the basics right.

3.5/5 for me.

Krishnavilasam is on Haddows Road, Nungambakkam.

Vegetarian restaurants rarely catch my attention. So when Tadka Talk was in its final stages of 'getting ready for public' and I was invited to check out their food, I wasn't very excited. We were given a platter of starters, four choice of gravies, two Indian breads and a dessert cocktail.

The food stunned us. Maybe because we were not expecting too much or maybe I did not think vegetarian could taste this well, but Chef Arora had it bang on! The starter platter that was served was simply lip smacking. I don't remember the names of the dishes as it was served like a cocktail, but every dish in the platter was superb. The main course arrived and was the only weak link, if you could call it that, in the whole meal. The Indian breads were perfect in flavour and thickness, while the gravies were just about alright - I liked the Dhal Makhni and the paneer, but the other two were ok. The lady's finger side dish was very simple - too simple for me to have it at a fine dine restaurant!

The dessert, also served as a 'three dishes plated together' format, was outstanding - the combination of carrot halwa, gulab jamun and kulfi was perfect! I hope they continue to maintain this quality of food and if they do, considering the kind of crowds in that part of town, this place is bound to do well.

If you are looking for a vegetarian fine dine restaurant and willing to drive to Velachery (or living in Velachery), then, you have another option henceforth.

My dine experience was a 3.5/5.

Tadka Talk is on the Velachery - OMR link road, opp TCS. Call 044 43213838 for reservations or driving directions.

And hey, if you enjoyed reading this, please share it!

Its the music season in Chennai!!!! Apparently, it holds the record for the longest music season in the world, a statistic that I am not planning to check and continue to hope that it is true. So the sabhas are full with music and when you come to listen to music and between sessions need a break, most of us will head out for lunch or snacks. So at lunch, snack and dinner time, during the music festival, the sabas serve lunch. But how do sabhas serve lunch? They out source it to good catering companies!

The sabhas are visited by parents of the singers and many a times are on the look out for a suitable life partner for their children or already found someone and the wedding is around the corner. They come for lunch, check out the service and food quality of the caterer and presto, they book them for the wedding. So the caterers in the sabhas put their best food forward!!!

People like us use this opportunity to get superb food!

So a bunch of 18 of us from CFG headed out to Vani Mahal on Saturday for lunch headed by Mr Mani GVS himself. Simple Tam Bram wedding lunch, veg of course, but food that is almost home like! Appalams, Vadams, Rice with podi and ghee, great sambar, even better rasam, superb curd, two poriyals, and a nice kesari summed up the meal. All of this for Rs 125 and unlimited. And served only during the music season.

I heard that from 430 onwards, you get great snacks too, so I am planning to head out and try that too. Will report if I do!

But don't even consider working after this lunch! In fact, I would consider not driving too! You will want to sleep as if there is no tomorrow!

The food was a 3.5/5! Nothing fancy, because it was not meant to be! But the experience was much better because we a huge group on a food attack mode!!!!

Vani Mahal is on G N Chetty road, opp the entry to Residency.

And hey, if you enjoyed reading this please share.

I was asked to review la Shakahari quite some back, but I kept postponing it to accommodate my other invited reviews, some of which were time bound. Also, let's be honest, a pure veg eat restaurant was not on my priority list. When I finally landed there on a short notice with a fellow foodie,we were rather remorseful that we did not give the place the importance it deserves.

Very nicely done interior in an upmarket but quiet space just off Haddows road, the restaurant is quite inviting. The menu is round in shape and tries to portray a multiple cuisine picture. A third friend joined us and we got ourselves a kebab platter to have a taste of all kebabs. What came out was an excellent platter that was just right in every sense. The paneer tikka, the veg sheek, the stuffed potato and everything about the platter was good. We also had a very different soup called the coconut basil soup which was something like the cousin of Tom yum soup and I quite enjoyed it. For the main course, we ordered naan and paneer gravy from the Indian section, and a white sauce pasta and stuffed pasta from the Italian section. The general consensus is that the Indian food rocks here, just rocks and I did not miss meat at all. The Italian and the baked stuff were alright, but I totally missed meat,but I am guessing that the vegetarians will be quite happy with them.

We ordered three desserts, The gulab jamun being served with a basunthi like liquid and not the sugar syrup and I totally loved it, while the carrot halwa was quite good too. The phirni was alright and it had to get a little colder and harder to enjoy, but in general the food was far above my expectations. Service is quick and attentive,so no complaints on that front. Pricing is quite attractive with the main courses being priced around Rs. 175 each.

It's a great new addition to the pure vegetarian eating scene in Chennai and the Indian cuisine is definitely up there. Apparently they are setting up a non veg restaurant in the first floor and I hope I am invited to try that out as well.

Food 8/10
Ambiance 8/10
Service 8/10
Price 9/10

La Shakahari is on pycrofts garden road off Haddows road in Nungambakkam.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad