Best of Chennai

After staying for nearly a year in Dubai, my mind fondly remembers those places in Chennai that I used to passionately freak out. Here is my list:

Best Vegetarian Lunch/Dinner (Budget): Gnanambika Mess at Thambiah (Reddy) Road, W.Mambalam. They serve unlimited rice, kootu, curry, sambar, rasam, butter milk and the best of the lot vatha kuzhambu on a plantain leaf all for 20 rupees. The interesting part is that you can buy any of these items individually in two or five rupee packs (five rupee pack is sufficient for two). The place is small and usually cramped with worn out tables and chairs but who cares when you are hungry and want to have a full tasty grub.

Best Vegetarian Lunch/Dinner (Medium): Chettinad Thali @ Hotel Namma Veedu Vasantha Bhavan adjacent to Vadapalani Bus Depot. At Rs.50, they serve herbal soup, hot chettinad briyani, special snack of the day, sweet, rice, sambar, rasam, curd, special side portion, pappad etc. Absolutely delicious.

Best Vegetarian Lunch/Dinner (Costly): Hotel Woodlands in Radhakrishnan Salai or Hotel Matsya at Pondy Baazar for a typical Udupi style lunch/dinner. Woodlands charges Rs.62 for an unlimited lunch with regular sambar, rasam, curd, poriyaal, kootu stuff with dhall and ghee spread over. Their speciality is vatha kuzhambu. Icre cream and beeda are served at the end of the meal. Matsya serves the above items plus a tasty soup. The other joint is Nilgiris Nest in Radhakrishnan Road, which serves a excellent limited lunch for Rs.50. But it’s a non vegetarian hotel (I am a veggie but don’t mind taking a veg. meal in a non-veg hotel.

Best Andhra Lunch/Dinner Joint: Annapoorana Mess in the street opposite to Siva Vishnu Temple (Think its Mahalakshmi Street), Hotel Andhra Lunch Home (opposite to old Rajakumari Theater Bus Stop in Pondy Bazaar), Hotel Amaravaathi on Radhakrishnan Salai (this is owned by the Savera group and has a hotel even in Karama, Dubai where I frequent for a good lunch @ 10 AED (Dirhams)). All the three are non-veg. hotels but serve excellent veg. bhojanam. Annapoorana is cheap joint at around Rs.23 for a gun-powder (dhall powder) filled lunch. The other great place is National Lunch Home at Parrys Corner.

Best South Indian Breakfast Hotel (Cheap): Hotel Kameshwari, Station Road, W.Mambalam. Speciality is Arusi Uppuma and Chappathy served with a different side dish daily. The hotel (if you can call it that) is a mostly standing hotel with very few school type chairs offered. Best thing is to buy packed food and eat at home. Rayar Mess in a small lane near Mylapore post office where food is served with yummy chilli chutney. The hotel is a one-man show and you have to wait for your turn in this small room which should be roughly around 150 Sq.ft.

Best South Indian Breakfast Hotel (Medium to Costly): Hotel Karpagambal Mess. This hotel is situated opposite Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore. Excellent food especially the thavalai vadai, adai avail and ghee kichadi. On the downside, the hotel charges high for very little comfort.

Best South Indian Breakfast Hotel (Costly): Drive in Woodlands near Anna Fly Over, Mount Road. Serves excellent iddlies and dosas. However, don’t think of Saravana style 3 chutneys becoz this serves only 1 coconut/pottu kadalai chutney for many years.

Best Snacks Shop (cheap): Venkata Ramana Poli Stall, the mother of all poli stalls. Running for over 25 years, the stall is the ‘original’ poli stall. It’s situated on Thambiah (Reddy) road in W.Mambalam. The other place is Subham Ganesan’s snack shop opposite RASI textile shop (near Kapalishwara temple) in Mylapore. Snacks are sold at affordable cost and are excellent. The best shop to buy vathals, vaddams and instant puliyodharai mix.

Best Snacks Shop (medium): Adyar Ananda Bhavan. If you lucky, you can buy sweet kozhakattai at a very affordable cost.

Best Veg.Briyani Shop: Bombay Halwa House near Khadi Gramodyag Bhavan in Mount road (Anna Salai). There are two Khadi’s in anna salai and this Khadi is the larger one near The Hindu office.

Best Gujarathi Thali: Gujarathi Mandali bhojanalaya on broadway road in Parrys area. This place serves unlimited Gujarathi lunch/dinner for an unbelievable Rs.35. Unlimited chappathis and chawal or gujju kichdi.

Best Tamil Book Shop: Booklands opposite ARR complex , North Usman Road, T.Nagar.

Best English Book Shop: As always, the Landmark book shops in Spencers Plaza, N.H.Road and Citi Center. The best among the three is the N.H.Road (Nungumbakkam High Road) branch, which is calm and serene. Also, had been a regular to this place since its inception in 1989 (see, am a serious reader hee hee). Also, I loved the new Crossword bookshop on Venkata Narayana road, T.Nagar. Their book collection has much more depth, especially the literature section. (I grabbed a copy of Ka by Roberto Collaso, which I had been searching for a long time since I missed the first copy).

Best Pub: Geoffrey’s at Radha Park Inn near Koyembadu Bus Stand on 100 feet road. Live band music which churns out soulful numbers. Dress code is semi-formal and its better to reserve a seat on the weekend. The other pub that I like is Bike-n-barrel in Residency Towers, Pondy Bazaar. The only disadvantage here is ladies/families are made to sit at one floor while bachelors/stags on the other. If your idea of frequenting a pub is to interact with the other sex, avoid this pub.

Best Bar (Budget): Hotel Asoka bar at Egmore. They serve excellent south Indian snacks like bhajjis and bondas free with your booze in the evenings. The place and the servers will remind you of yesteryears Madras than the modern Chennai. The other watering hole that I would recommend is Hotel Maris on Radhakrishnan Salai.
Best Bar (Costly): Savera hotel bars on Radhakrishnan Salai and Rain Tree Hotel bar on St.Marys Road, Abiramapuram.

Best TASMAC bar: Ranjith bar (though now no Tasmac shop has a name) adjacent to Sooriya hospital, Arunachalam road, vadapalani area. They serve excellent paniyaram for Rs.10. The A/C area is clean and neat and Rs.15 is charged per hour, per person.

Best Beeda Shop: Benaras Beeda Shop in front of Ganpat Hotel on N.H.Road. Taste their chilled magai beeda and you would know what I mean.

Best Rose Milk Shop: Kalathi Rose Milk shop opposite to Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan, Mylapore. You can also make it at your home by buying a bottle of rose syrup. I heard that they been in this business for over 80 years now and used to be one of the largest soda distributors in the then Madras Rajadhani.

Best Paneer Soda Shop: Soda mixed with paneer (rose water) essence is called paneer soda and used to be a favourite drink of the Tamils in the past. With Cokes and Pepsis eating (or gulping, shall we say!) the market, many manufacturers of this unique drink have since closed shop. However, Mapillai Vinayagar soda, the king of paneer sodas (which is still available in the trichy region) is available in some shops in Thiruvatriyoor area near the temple.

Best Mall: I would rate Spencers as one of the best shopping malls in the world even though I have visited mega sized ones (including Mall of Emirates, Ibn Batuta, City Center) in Dubai. The reason is that unlike these malls, a visitor can buy a shirt from Rs.50 (Unbranded) to Rs.5000 (Over branded!!!) in Spencers plaza whereas the other malls will either have a choice of other brands and its own brand. But, on the down side, Spencers is too congested on weekends and finding a parking space is tough. But, almost all the malls face this problem.

Best Cinema Hall: Satyam Multiplex. What fascinates me is the management’s patronage to showcase offbeat/ world movies continuously, which I haven’t seen in any other multiplex chain (I had visited a lot of them during my visits to Mumbai and Bangalore). The best budget movie hall is Devi complex, which has over five screens. This complex is one of the earliest adaptors of digital technology (having introduced Dolby/DTS and Continuous Loop Projection system some 10 -15 years ago) but has ever since lagged in its updates. With such a large complex and a fairly good parking lot, the management should focus and innovate.

Best TV Channel (Tamil): Even though I hate Rupert Murdoch and Newscorp for commoditising news and manipulating it to fill their coffers, I still think Vijay TV is the best run Tamil channel which churns out innovative programs. However, the programs are too urbanized and Americanized – one reason why the channel never beaten the competition.