We recently went to the Southern Aroma, the South Indian restaurant at the Residency Towers in T Nagar to celebrate my brother’s birthday. As it was Independence Day, we reserved a table and landed up on time for lunch, not knowing what to expect. For we had been to Main Street (the coffee shop) and the Bike & Barrel a number of times, but hadn’t even seen the Southern Aroma.

We entered into a large, spacious restaurant, done in the Chettinad style. Etched glass windows let in natural daylight, giving the place a pleasant look. Huge Chettinad pillars rose at intervals to ornate beams set with wooden studs in between panels. The sides had decorative Mangalore tiles in a faux roof set with recessed lights. The tables and chairs in Chettinad style completed the picture.

We were ushered to our table and sat down to find ourselves looking at banana leaves trimmed and set in banana leaf shaped metal plates! Quite unique and very usable. The menu was brought, and after a careful study, we ordered: Soups; murungakai soup and aatukaal soup between all of us. Then we were served an assortment of starters; vadais with chutney; thenga, maanga, pattani, sundal; chicken fry. Then came the main course; Kerala parathas, aapams, with prawn balichao, mangalore fish fry, mutton sukka varuval and chicken curry.

The mangalore fish fry, chicken curry and aapams were very good. As were the Kerala parathas. The mutton varuval was very rich with nuts (never had it that way before), while the prawn balichao was a bit of a disappointment as we were used to the balichao in Goa and Bombay. The desserts made up for it though! We had kulfis, theneer payasam and rasmalai. The theneer payasam was particularly good, as well as the rasmalai, albeit quite heavy (the Shree Mithai rasmalai is better though!)

At the end of all that, we were quite stuffed to say the least! The bill came to about Rs 400 per person for the five of us. Not bad given the sumptuous meal that we had, although the starters were courtesy the management. Okay, now for the ratings: décor & ambience 8, service 8, food 7, value 7. Clearly, this is one of the good Indian restaurants in the city when you’d like to celebrate at a good venue. So the next time your birthday or any other special event rolls around, take in the Southern Aroma. You’ll likely enjoy it.