Madurai Military Hotel
I do my first kerbside pickup for two reasons. The hefty margins that delivery apps demand from restaurants (while simultaneously charging customers) eats into the already slim profits that cloud kitchens make. If you can pick up your food, it is a great way to support your favourite restaurants.
My second reason is more selfish: I just want a mid-pandemic, getaway drive (Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would say in the good old days of 2019).
I pay online and park at Savya Rasa in Kotturpuram, where my order is neatly packed and ready to go. Although this newly-launched cloud kitchen by Pricol Gourmet currently runs out of Savya Rasa, which is deliberately old school, Madurai Military Hotel (MMH) aims at a more rustic style of ‘mess’ inspired food.
Which means, you can also choose to snack on Savya Rasa’s crisp vazhaipoo vadai at the quiet restaurant, and then leave with lunch ordered from the completely different MMH menu.
Inspired by the city’s military hotels, which specialise in fiery, meaty dishes, the menu offers competitively priced combos, featuring favourites like biryani, mutton sukka, pepper chicken and masala kalakki.
In the hands of chefs in a structured restaurant environment, flavours are bright and clear; a step up from the chaos of spice that usually defines this food. Admittedly, there are better biryanis in the city, but MMH scores with the flurry of accompaniments — from juicy prawns in patiently caramelised masala to shredded chicken speckled with chillies.
In typical mess style, they also offer flaky parotta, idiappam and kal dosai. Breakfast will be launched in a few weeks, so you can start your day the military way — at 7:30 am, with kushboo idlies and pepper paya.
Call MMH Kotturpuram on 7397774841, and Perungudi on 739915044
Knockout Rusi
When Patricia Narayan started making mutton biryani at home, it was just to cheer herself up. Now she and her son, Praveen Rajkumar, have their hands full dishing out fish cutlets, chicken 65 and kozhukattai for a large, growing audience.
Patricia runs the restaurant Prasan Sandeepha in Madipakkam and was also catering to the Infosys Food Court till the start of lockdown in March. Praveen is a partner at restobar Barracuda Brew. With everything on pause, the mother and son combined their restaurant experience with Patricia’s cooking skills to start catering from home.
Patricia began with a ‘ready to fry’ section, offering chicken 65 and cutlets to stock your freezer. Now the menu has expanded to offer ghee roast chicken, mutton uppu curry, and her signature, badam halwa. She keeps the menu deliberately flexible, so she can make changes depending on what she gets fresh from the market every week.
“For the past two weeks I have been making a pepper chicken fry,” she says, adding with a laugh, “Next week, I am planning Knockout Rusi fried chicken... like KFC, but I can boldly say mine is better.”
Call 9840199000 or 9884149333
Shree Konar Vilas
Like many of his customers, Karthik Mukesh is not a fan of delivery. This Purasawalkam restaurant, famous for its fluffy bun parottas, prides itself on the irreplaceable seductiveness of steamy kothu parotta, egg dosa and fish fry straight off the tava, and onto your plate.
The restaurant uses Karthick’s mother’s recipes and takes pride in using hand ground masalas and cold pressed oils. “It is a very simple restaurant serving typical Madurai food,” says Karthik. “We are operating a very limited menu now and have not reopened our Besant Nagar branch yet.”
Fortunately, the parottas are back — served with their flavour-packed, slow-cooked “free” salna. With lockdown, they have made some changes. “We used to get mutton delivered from Madurai everyday, but that is not possible now. Also, mutton prices are soaring, and I want to keep every dish affordable,” says Karthick, adding, “We now make our kolai urundai with chicken, and it has turned out as good as the original!”
Konar Vilas is back to almost 70 percent of the business they did pre-pandemic, which is an encouraging sign. Although, as with other city restaurants, many customers pop in for a quick chat, chai and snack, while choosing to ‘parcel’ their main meal: the sociable desi version of a kerbside pickup.
Call 48596480
This weekly column tracks the city’s shifting culinary landscape. Heard of a new food venture? Tell me: shonali.m@thehindu.co.in
