Almost 5 years back, when I moved from Mumbai to Chennai - the first reaction from the HR PoC was..."WHY?".. Well, maybe the question was there in my mind too, buried under layers of reasoning I'd tried to feed myself, trying to be convinced about the decision. But who am I fooling? There was just one basic reason to be honest - the economics behind it! After all an air ticket from Mumbai to Bangalore was < the KSRTC ticket from Chennai..
So here I was, a guy from Lucknow - moving from an addictive-chaos called Mumbai to a complete unknown city. But then maybe I shouldn't say unknown. For starters, the humidity wasn't much different. Well yeah, 5-7 degrees more thrown in to keep things in a constant state of "pre-heat".
Cut to life in Chennai, 3-4 months hence...
I was lucky as hell to find my roomie from graduation times working in the same company so ended up shacking up with him, awesome group of people to work with at the new place and at time, the biggest downside was the process of buying the weekend stock of booze from TASMAC! Ask anyone who's done this, TASMAC is probably single most tragic retail experience one can go through! By this time, I had made the transition to "Chicken-65" and "Kotthu Paratha" as appetizer options from the days of "Seekh Kabab" and "Malai Tikka" from Mumbai...
I was pleasantly surprised at what Chennai had to offer as gastronomical options. Being the un-enlightened North Indian that I was, it took the company of good work colleagues, some of whom are now "family friends"...for me to be completely bowled over by what Chennai and cuisine from south of India in general had to offer. Places like Dakshin, GRT Temple Bay, Moonraker's, Amravati, Ponnuswamy, Anjappar, Karaikudi + at least 25 more such joints, introduced my taste buds to true bliss. Appams with mutton korma, crab masala with Kerela porotta to mutton varuval...with goddamn' anything! Chennai simply rocked!
The above featured dish is my attempt at trying to re-create those flavors in a distant land…
