It’s right there and even then i am sure you will miss the place. No it’s not a place where you can take your date for a nice dinner and no it’s not a place for all the health freaks out there but we can tell you it’s a awesome place with yummy food where you can go with your friends and have a great snack right by the road!!!

Mattas is your friendly neighborhood eat-out/fast-food located in Ashok Nagar. There are just 4 tables inside and it gets really cramped but you could just sit outside on plastic stools.

It’s a totally VEG fast-food and trust me there are some interesting choices there!

We start off with the usual tomato soup which is pretty ok and ordered some Veg Balls – the veg balls are really good, though a little less oil can do wonders, but it’s nice and crunchy on the outside and tastes awesome. The portions they give are good.

Our favorite is the chilly Gobi rice. It’s basically fried with gobi in it and it’s nice and spicy and the portions are really filling mind you.

The chilly mushroom here is awesome too. Its deep fried pieces of mushroom and you really wouldn’t believe some one could make mushrooms like this. You have limited choices and the menu is basically displayed on a board – chilly gobi, panneer and usual other vegetarian dishes you would find anywhere else and trust me the food is neat – they serve on steel plates with a banana leaf on top. I wouldn’t recommend the water they serve you there though.

All in all a good place to catch a quick bite before you head home to some good sleep after work.

Prasad my friend who agreed to review this place with me, has been going to this joint for the last 8 years now and agrees the taste has not changed a bit; though the prices have gone up a wee bit – come on inflation is catching up folks!

A quick dinner for two would set you back anywhere between Rs.100 to Rs.150

Ps – Will update later with the address and photos.

When your wallet dons you, and yet you want to don your taste buds, then the right place for you would be – “Mithai Mandir”

Located near the Vadapalani temple, this place is easy to find. Looking at it from outside, it would not really impress you.

Mithai Mandir Entrance

Enter the place and it’s a small restaurant, which has 2 floors. The ground floor can seat 24 people while the 1st floor can seat about 36 people. The entire restaurant is Air conditioned. The smell of traditional Rajasthani cuisines soon starts to tickle your nostrils once you start ordering your food, making you all the more hungry. The service is reasonably quick here.

Dhokla is one of best we can find in Chennai. I still don’t know how they manage to make such soft dhoklas. They also have a big Kachori’s, which is certainly BIG! (Way bigger than you normally can imagine a kachori to be)

The restaurant which specializes in Rajasthani and Gujarathi food, serve authentic thalis for Rs.55 and Rs.65 respectively. They also have Chaat items, 12 varieties of sweets, Combo meals, rice variety, Raithas and a wonderful variety of stuffed parathas. The Cheese Paneer paratha is a must try. For the Oh-I-am-Diet-conscious or Oh-gosh-not-that-oily-stuff people, you can try their wonderful phulkas, and I can bet you cannot find one as soft as these along with their dal to go.

And finally their desserts – mm you should try the Badam Milk. Oh my!! Just like a Good ‘ol wine to a palatable dinner. Or maybe even the Malai lassi.

They also have variety of snacks and namkeen, and while you leave – you can choose and pack some traditionally made khakhras, which is a must buy here.

Snack Counter

Mithai Mandir is located at 17, Palani Andavar Koil Street, Vadapalani and is a place one must visit to taste the traditional Gujarathi or Rajasthani food.

Oye Guru!! What are you waiting for …??? Go there sometime and do some real hogging!

Special thanks to Harish, one of my friends who agreed to review this restaurant, happens to be a great fan of this place and is the one who introduced me to Mithai Mandir a few years back and since then we religiously go to this restaurant minimum twice a month.

Trivia – The owner of Mansukh (T.Nagar) and this place are related to each other.

Was thinking of starting a review about hotels in Chennai which i have visited until now, till i stumbled on this Orkut forum called Chennai Food guide – It is a treasure trove of food and restaurant’s review in Chennai. Go ahead and join the forum.

By the way – Crown at the Residency Towers has got a good view of Chennai, I liked the restaurant except for the high priced buffet.

The omnipresent attitude across India and the often cited blame for India’s poor state of affairs is its ‘Chalta Hai’ attitude. Now even restaurants seem to have imbibed the attitude, especially after the concept of dining emerged. Now one dines at a restaurant, one does not go there for just the food. When it was the latter the emphasis was on the food, now its more on ambience and atmosphere.
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Woodlands Drive In is an institution which many Madrasis swear by, and some swear at. Situated in the heart of the city, the restaurant was started in 1962, when the hotelier K. Krishna Rau convinced the Horticultural Society to lease its premises to him for a restaurant. It was Chennai’s first drive in restaurant and claims to be the first to have introduced Channa Batura to Chennai.
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Have you heard that Hemingway and J.K. Rowling – before she became richer than the Queen – work a lot out of cafes? If you have ever heard such stories, believe them to be true, and possess some love for the world of words, then you want to ape them big authors. So last night, armed with a stack of printouts from various websites, I landed up at Resident Inn Chennai hoping to have a drink of that acrid drink they call coffee. Since I can’t write anything except blogs, I had, of course, decided to do the other thing that people with a love for words do: Read, as I sip my coffee.
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I’m a big fan of buffets. The idea of being able to sample a wide variety of dishes is a source of great amusement to my tummy. And in the quest of such fun and games, I landed up at the Accord Metropolitan last week for dinner and homed in on the ground floor restaurant.

As expected (for Rs. 550 per head, I’d expect nothing less), the food was excellent. Absolute ticklers as far as my taste buds were concerned. It wasn’t the widest spread I’d had on my plate, but what was out there was very soon in here (pointing to my tummy).

That however wasn’t the high point of the evening. I beg to draw your attention to what is popularly known as ‘service’ by the hotel industry. It was outstanding at the Accord. In fact the best I’ve seen in my 14 months in Chennai.

Now I’m sure you’re wondering what role service plays in a buffet. Well it’s a pleasant surprise, and I’m not going to deny you that.

For those of you who want an instant association to hotel Spathagiri here it goes – these people own the Brilliant Tutorials Kai Yendhi Bhavan. Rather ironical that the road-side eatery of theirs is more popular than the parent. I happened to visit this hotel which is off Masilamani Street in T Nagar, just about 100 meters from the Kai Yendhi Bhavan. And I must say it is true value for money. The hotel is a simple no-nonsense hotel spread over 2 floors – ground and first floor. Plastic chairs are what is seen and the walls are anywhere between half clean and dirty. They serve ala carte in the ground floor (namma ooru tiffin) and meals in the first floor. Since I went at about 1pm I decided to have the meals. I picked up a token, all of Rs. 21 and walked up through the narrow 1970’s staircase.
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Rasam is the new restaurant venture of Sri Krishna Sweets (of course you’ve already heard of their Continental food) at Purasawalkam. Situated on Raja Annamalai Road, somewhat opposite Dharmaprakash Kalyana Mandapam and a couple of buildings away from M Ct M school, Rasam calls itself an authentic Kongunad restaurant. It is housed in the first floor of a beautiful old bungalow and if you are lucky you might get to sit near a window and if you peep out you might see some of Chennai quintessential potti kadais and if that doesn’t take you back in time, what will?
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If the tradional way to a man’s heart rears its head well into the night, you needn’t make do with left overs from the fridge. Here are a few other options that I know of. Feel free to add your bit to the menu.

Mathsya – Egmore
Midnight Express – Opp Naradha Ghana Sabha
Hotel Residency – G N Chetty Road
Cresent – Sterling Road (two of them open till about 2 am)
Midnight Express – Anna Nagar
Buharis – Mount Road
Kartik Tiffin Centre – Anna Nagar (open till 2 am)
TOPSEE – opp. Adyar NIIT (non-veg food till 1:30 AM)
GRT Coffee shop – Midnight Combo for Rs 150