As part of the Anglo Scapes Cultural Festival of which the play ‘…and sunshine follows the rain’ was a part, the Connemara is having an Anglo-Indian Food Festival till July 15th. Having seen the play Sunday evening, we decided to complete the experience with dinner at the Verandah, the coffee shop where the food festival is being held.

The food festival was a disappointment, as there was a limited variety of food available, despite it being a buffet. There was an extensive salad counter, but salads are not what you’d call community specific! There were two kinds of soup; a cream of cauliflower soup and a chicken and sweet corn which was decidedly Chinese, not Anglo-Indian.

The main course consisted of potato croquettes, stuffed tomatoes, cauliflower augratin for the vegetarians. The non-vegetarian selection was meat and potato curry (typical, but more potato and less meat!), pork sorpotel (more Goan, than Anglo-Indian) and egg curry. There was a good spread of desserts, again general and not particularly Anglo-Indian.

So, you see, it was quite a disappointment on the whole. No fish, no chicken, not enough choice on the vegetarian selection, and certainly not enough representation of authentic Anglo-Indian food. When there are so many of them living in Chennai (the highest concentration of Anglo-Indians as Lavanya pointed out), what was the difficulty in getting a wide selection of recipes I wonder?

One certainly didn’t expect such a half-baked festival from the Taj group of hotel