As noted in our Chennai page, at about 9:00 AM on the morning following our arrival into Chennai, we met our new driver Mohan Raj at our center city hotel for the 20 minute drive to the south to our meeting point in front of the Sri Anantha Padmanabha Swamy Temple in Adyar. There we met Food Walk Guide Sajan.
Given the early hour of our tour, our first couple stops were at local bakeries known primarily for sweets. In fact our first stop was at The Grand Sweets and Snacks bakery. Sajan explained how important the connection that the local community felt for these traditional foods and how packages of these treats were commonly shipped to family in other parts of the world.
We viewed the many options in the display case and Sajan picked an assortment for us to taste. Everything was good but VERY SWEET.
From there we followed up at a local outlet for Sri Krishna Sweets, a popular Indian sweet manufacturer based in Tamil Nadu. Not only can you order and eat on site at Sri Krishna but they have a wide assortment of pre-packaged sweets and snacks that can be taken away or shipped anywhere in the world.
Sri Krishna Sweets It is most famous for Mysore Pak, perhaps the most popular dessert in South India. Its ingredients are pretty simple: flour, sugar and an ample portion of ghee. Again Sajan ordered a sampling of desserts and a few savory snacks which we tried with frothy South Indian Filter Coffee.
Our next stop was Ambica Appalam Depot, a small neighborhood grocery store. I grew up working in a grocery store so I’m always interested in visiting them wherever we travel and enjoy just walking up and down the aisles. This is a small store but jam packed with all the ingredients needed for preparing South Indian cuisine. And to my pleasure, I found a few cans of Schweppes Tonic Water, the perfect mix for the bottle of Bombay Sapphire I had purchased at the duty free on our way to India.
Despite eating desserts and drinking coffee for much of the morning, the last stop on our Adyar Food Walk was for lunch at Prems Graama Bhojanam. On our own we probably would have never found the entrance down an alley and up a flight of stairs to what had formerly been a flat but Sajan knew it well.
As we walked there he told us about this restaurant’s mission to serve local healthy vegetarian food at reasonable prices. He told us all dishes here were prepared without artificial flavors, food colorings, sugar or white rice and that the main ingredient of most dishes was millet; the same millet that makes up a part of many bird food mixes we use in the U.S.
If we had been given a choice of whether to go there or not before entering, I’m not sure which way we would have decided but once we got the first taste of food, we were amazed. Everything was better than just good. Sajan encouraged us to order sampler plates and quite honestly I don’t remember everything we had but as we were eating we both agreed if we had vegetarian options like these at home, we might be forced to reconsider some of our food choices.
I’m not sure we will ever return to Chennai but if we do, we would return to Prems Graama Bhojanam.
Check out our report on the Copper Chimney Restaurant, our favorite restaurant in Chennai or for more of our activities in Chennai,