Benjarong - An oriental awakening

Benjarong - the name for some reason rings a "gong". But figured it actually means "five colours" in Thai, and the more common usage is for referring to painted porcelain. There may not be many Thai restaurants in Chennai, and when one talks about it, the only name that crops, not surprisingly, is that of Benjarong. The restaurant is located near The Sheraton Towers on TTK Road, Alwarpet.

I reached the destination for once, without losing my sense of purpose and direction :-). The restaurant logo - A traditional Thai dancer with hands outstretched sideways - adorned the front porch type entrance. My two friends lived up the virtues of punctuality, which meant I was the last one to take my seat at the table. This particular drive from Tambaram to Alwarpet on my bike was one of the most painful ones, thanks to billowing smoke from all kinds of vehicles and the mad-rush on a Saturday afternoon. The guys had already started on a rather exotic looking tender coconut water and what I believe, was Jasmine Tea. I was hungry beyond reasonable limits, but decided to expunge the grime and soot on my hands prior to digging in. What followed was comedy of epic proportions!! Preeth made the first move to the wash room, and I opted to wait outside for my turn. While I waited for my turn, I even had time to make two calls and still there was no sign of Preeth. The third call I got on was with Preeth and apparently he couldn’t figure out a way to unlock himself. Like any good samaritan, I volunteered to unlock him from his misery, only to find that I was unable to unlock him and worse, I locked myself too in the wash basin area. Nihal had to be our saviour, so I buzzed him and he responded, tongue-in-cheek, that he didn’t want to lock himself too with us. After some embarrassing moments and good laughs, Nihal turned to be our saviour but he safely chose to outsource the job to one of the restaurant staff. Not to be done with the fiasco, I used the wash room and once again I locked myself in. After the final rescue act, we were re-assured that we were not the only smart-alecs to go through this experience. But am sure we were unique in doing a double-act in this one.

To liberate our senses, we ordered the Thai staple Chicken Pad Thai, a custom ordered Chicken Red Curry and the special Chicken Jungle fried rice. The food portions were quite acceptable, and seemed reasonably priced given the ambience, taste and location of the restaurant. However, the items that are laced with Prawn cost a premium - somewhere around Rs.545. The Pad Thai was little too sweet, but complemented the other two spicy offerings. While the overall restaurant setting was really good, one should not expect waiters adorned in traditional Thai attire, as was the case when the restaurant started off. I am assuming the place would probably look more beautiful during the evenings, when the Thai handicrafts and paintings would come to life in the dim lights. That remains to be tried out though. Of the items that we ordered, I would surely recommend the "Jungle fried rice" which had generous doses of fine fried onions, but the Red Curry was nothing extraordinary. Preeth really liked his coconut water, which apparently had a zing to it :-). I enquired if they had the sticky rice for dessert and unfortunately they didn’t. Preeth recommended that we could head to French Loaf for trying out some pastries and cakes. The overall meal for the three of us at Benjarong cost around Rs.1400, which was expected, given the pricing standards set by most of the restaurants from Oriental Cuisines stable. So with a heavy heart, a relatively lighter purse, and a satiated feeling, we hit French Loaf and tried out the Mango pastry, a Carrot-Walnut Cake and a Blueberry Pastry. All yummy and delicious!! While Preeth and Nihal headed for the Chennai Open, I laboured back home.



Benjarong@Chennai

New Year/Avatar/Kokum

Compared to last year’s New Year Eve in Kathmandu, this year’s celebration in Chennai was more comfortable and enjoyable. First off, we got the official go ahead to bunk half a day’s office – my colleagues at work along with their families descended on Sathyam for the matinee show of Avatar-3D. The chaos called “corporate booking” with Sathyam was a different matter altogether. However, thanks to a complete team effort we did manage it pull it off.


The movie itself was quite spectacular: the visual imagery, as written in every quarter, is breathtaking in the first half and the second half is more action and some loosely scripted plot and dialogues (remember “300” – all that bravado backed by some inept acting and very poor speeches). The toddlers in the audience were awestruck and weren’t scared, and hence made it easier for their dads to watch the movie in whole. Even though, as is my custom, I missed the first few minutes, I picked up the futuristic plot (whatever there was) which talks about a distant planet – Pandora – habituated by Na’vi people. The US armed forces led by Col.Miles (Stephen Lang) is commissioned to extract a mineral – Unobtainium, from that planet. He enlists a paraplegic ex-marine Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) to aid Dr.Augustine (Cameron favorite – Sigourney Weaver) and her team, with the intention of persuading the Na’vis eventually to settle for a negotiation with humans with regards to the giving up their sacred place which houses the mineral. So Jake and Augustine’s minds take on the incarnation (aka Matrix) of Na’vis to befriend and gain their trust in an effort to avoid the potential mayhem. The love angle is provided in the form of Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who is entrusted with the job of training Jake in hopping trees and taming wild aerial dragon-like creatures in Pandora. As love blossoms between Jake and Neytiri, Col.Miles runs out of patience and calls for bombarding Pandora and usurping Unobtainium. But Jake and Augustine by now are totally against the military showdown and try their level best to persuade the Colonel against it, but to no avail. The second half is all about flying battleships, dragons, warriors on horses, big elephant like creatures stampeding and some very badly written call-for-war dialogues. As one would expect, its triumph of good over evil, albeit the loss of precious human and Na’vi lives. Cameron is the big bad splurge master, equivalent of our own Kollywood Shankar, when it comes to spending a fortune in film-making. But at the end of it all, Avatar-3D is an enjoyable fantasy laden action adventure, set in a Utopian planet.


Post the movie, a splinter group (8 out of 38) made its way to ID in Sathyam. I had my share of pre-dinner appetizers, while majority had their full-dinner. I had few other friends to catch up for dinner and after some serious thought in deciding the dining place, we settled for Kokum (Another oriental group specialty restaurant). The restaurant is located in MRC Nagar and is pretty cut-off from the city’s hum-drum. The restaurant specializes in predominantly Kerala cuisine, but had fair share of Goan and Mangalorean delicacies as well. Buffet, priced at a princely sum of 545INR, is a very rare feature of this place and they had one, owing to the New Year ’s Eve. I checked out their ala carte menu and figured that the buffet had a representation of the main dishes from that menu. So the eventual price of the buffet works out to be cheaper if one were to try out those dishes from the menu. The place is a well decorated (just like any other oriental group restaurant ), the food is authentic and really good, and has luxury apartment complexes in its vicinity. Apparently Hotel Leela, being constructed there, is set to be inaugurated by Dec 2010. We also met few third party acquaintances who happened to work for Nila ventures (holding company of Hotel Leela) and were currently residing in the apartment opposite to that of Dhoni’s (he bought that flat for Rs 2.crore).

Post dinner, it was drive back home at around 10 PM, by when the roads were already being battered by few crazy drivers in bikes and cars in spite of the heavy patrolling (in numbers alone, not by their ability to chase down the offenders). Back home, I popped in the “Eagle has landed” DVD……

Happy New Year to everyone !!

High on Caffeine

High on Caffeine ( HoC ) is probably an apt place to go, when most of the time one feels sleep deprived. And then comes an article in IBN stating that traditionally 93% of us Indians are short on quality snooze. But, HoC is tucked away neatly into the Mitsubishi showroom on LB Road Adyar, opposite Globus. One cant miss the advert board craving for attention, just before the Indian Oil petrol pump.

The western world's influence on Indian coffee shops are quite noticeable, and this one is no exception. The sport bar/coffee theme has been generously borrowed from the quaint one-off sports bars in the US, especially with the motor sport logo graffiti at the entrance. The day I went, there wasnt much crowd to be seen around, and few youngistan junta had plopped onto the generous sized bean-bags, sipping away to glory. There are couple of pool and foose ball tables, nintendo and playstation consoles, few neolithic white/gray leather lined chairs alongwith the centerpiece tables, and ample space. There is also a separate enclosure for the mild-mannered folks who wouldnt prefer the din of people going crazy over sport on the big screen. The biggest USP of this place could be the really good quality giant screen, which incidentally was broadcasting the T20 between India and Srilanka. It was just a happenchance that we dropped into this place, and given the smattering of crowd seen around, looks like word hasnt gone around about this relatively new-in-town coffee abode. We ordered cappuccinos ( the first drink to evaluate if we would return to a coffee shop ) and some kind of cheese loaded crouton type bread which came with few potato chips. The coffee cost Rs.50 while the crouton order cost around Rs.90. HoC lived upto its name with the cappuccino being pretty strong without we asking for it be so, but was little thin in the density aspect. The end result was that it was not too great a serving of the caffeine, but made up for it with the salivating prospect of watching more cricket games at this place. Would surely recommend for sports fans who prefer to see the big and bad games with friends to argue and cheer collectively.

P.S : Few short quips on the movies
Kurbaan - Rensil D'Silva's commendable movie on terrorism and love. Good music score, backed by strong performances from the lead pair and the supporting cast. Good watch, wont be disppointed.

Inglorious Basterds - Slash fest coupled with trigger fest. Oodles of bullet piercing the bodies and generous spurts of blood. Smug and cocky portrayal of a nazi slayer by Brad Pitt. Eli Roth ( "Hostel" director ), in a meaty role that sure looks like tailor made to suit his thought, action and direction of evil. Must see for Tarantino fans.

Vettai - Its in a league of its own, even before the release. Slated for an early morning show at Sathyam this Saturday. Watch out this space for an "objective" review ( trust me on this one ).

The Hyderabadi Biryani

I set off on my quest to taste the ever-so-popular Hyderabadi Biriyani from "Paradise" hotel in Secundarabad. The biriyani had what we would call, "larger than life image". Now please dont argue about the not-so-wise choice of analogy. I started off from my borrowed space in a cab - one hour package for Rs.300 within an hour or 20 kms, and every additional hour would be Rs.100 + Rs.18/km. Luckily I reached my destination within one hour and paid Rs.350 in all.

I found my way to the 2nd floor of "Paradise" :-)( there were many different mini-restaurants of Paradise in different floors ). There was another dude, who was waiting eagerly for his quota of hyderabadi cuisine and I took the table next to his. The menu had the usual non-veg fare, but I looked for the word "Biriyani" and they had a separate section for it. The "Paradise Special Biriyani" was listed for a whopping 660 rupees and another one was for some 550. I am assuming it would serve a group of 4 or so, else, dont see why would someone charge so much for a biriyani at a non-star restaurant. However, I scanned down for what would serve my needs - a chicken biriyani for Rs.165. I saw big servings of Biriyani in a copper vessel being taken to different tables and thought maybe it was the special biriyani. But to my surprise, I got mine too in a similar vessel and was horrified at huge the quantity of rice.
The chicken piece buried in the rice, was as tender and well-cooked as it can get. The offering had general doses of saffron for sure, which was very dominant among other spices used for the rice. It was more close to the kerala biriyani, where the masala is not fully mixed with rice, than to the traditional chettinad biriyani. The accompaniments included, a rather plain raitha, a very ordinary mild chicken gravy and some slices of onion and lemon.

A friend of mine had remarked that "Paradise Biriyani" is more hype than substance and unfortunately, that was the case. It was really good, but wasnt good enough to generate the "Aahaa" feeling. The biriyani my friend made in a typical mallu style and the one at Anjappar-Nungambakkam restaurant are the best I have tasted so far. Lucknowi biriyani is next on the list. However, for now my first big agenda of the visit was done and dusted, and I wondered if I will be able to eat or drink anything for the next 8 hours after this bountiful biriyani episode. I proved myself wrong- had a aaloo paratha to satiate the 4-hour delayed hunger pang. Long live spicy Indian food, and the wait for Irani chai continues....

The Amethyst and Mocha Mojo - Coffee with a difference

Two different coffee shops ( as differnet as chalk and cheese, must I say ) in three days...in Chennai. Am sure many of the coffee lovers who prefer to have their coffee outside the safe confines of their homes once in a while, would have visited atleast one of the two - The Amethyst. The fact that it is closer to Saravana Bhavan and Sathyam makes it all the more worthwhile to pay a visit. The place apparently has been renovated to match the splendour of the years gone by : it is actually a colonial mansion. A regular plain croissant used to be a must have for me, until recently when they removed that staple item from their menu. On the latest visit, I found the potato wedges ( 110 Rs ) to be the best of the breed, accompanied by a yummy creamy dip. The crostini was not all that great, but the coffee was its usual self - good :-). My friend ordered a tender coconut which was priced at a hefty 80 rupees, but the quantity made up for the steep price.



The USP of the place are its verdant garden, ample parking space, a stately interior with plush cushion chairs, well placed steel and coir seatings under cool natural shades around the main building, and of course the fresh and well done pastries and the best potato wedges ( as on date ) in town. For those net savvy folks, the wi-fi comes at a price of Rs.60 per hour ; always find atleast one netizen hooked onto a Apple MaC ( it always has been a MaC, wonder why. Is it the same person all the time ? ).
Location : The Amethyst, Padmavathi Rd, Gopalapuram, Chennai



Mocha Mojo is all hip and jazz. Modelled on 70s retro style, with chic colours on brick styled interiors and 70's western music and a toilet to go with the overall theme, the place is a definite stand out. The few times I have been there, the place is packed mostly with college goers but there is proof of middle age and working professionals haunting the place too. Everything about the place is different, be it the glass water bottle with a cork lid and a mint plant suspended within or the hookas on the first floor or the huge mug in which the final hefty bill is brought to your table. The menu is very western and has calorie information, with no room for Indian traditional fare. Me and my friends ordered minced lamb noodles ( Rs.250 ) and a 3 egg white omellete ( Rs.180 and came with some of the best fresh italian style bread, kidney beans based tomato sauce, flavoured butter and amazing french fries ). The coffee shop offers caffeine beverages, shakes, pastries and pies, panini and pastas and more. Not a everyday hangout place, but well worth the ocassional get-together.
Location : Mocha Mojo, 72, 1st Avenue- Indira Nagar, Adyar, Chennai-20

iD - Idli Dosa at Sathyam Cinemas

With two hours to kill before the late night movie show, we stopped by the uber-cool "iD" restaurant on the first floor in the Sathyam complex. As is the case with any hotspot in Chennai, we had to wait patiently for our turn. The only thing traditional about this place was its name, rest everything was chic and novel. The waiters were decked in all black and appeared energetic in serving the fare to the eagerly awaiting clientele. After about 10 mins, we got our due table and requested for a menu card. Instead we were given what looked like a bookmark, on the back of which were listed the dishes in a novel way : Simple traditional south indian fare - broadly classified as Idli, Dosa, Vada, Pongal ( Sweet and Salt ), Beverages ( Chai, Coffee, Lassi etc ), Adai and Paeserattu, with most of them having sub classifications. We ordered Keerai vadai ( which was overdone and was hard to bite into ), Masala vadai ( quite alright ) and Medhu vadai ( the best of the lot ). Once we moved past the initial intertia, the orders just kept flowing - adai, rava and masala dosa, appam, idiappam ( accompanied by cocunut milk/khurma/veg stew ). Once we realized that we had actually come for a movie, we stopped, but not before ordering two masala chais ( very dull and too thick for a T ). The plates were of steel and reeked off modernity, so were the porcelain cups for sambar and chutneys ( green, white and red chutneys ). The prices were reasonable and the meal for the 4 of us cost around Rs.430. A nice place, only if you were to club it alongwith a visit to the movies or need to bite into something as late as 11 in the night.