My last point of call in India was Chennai (or Madras as it used to be known), down in Tamil Nadu in the South East of India. We got into Chennai first thing in the morning after the third successive day of 6am flights (have these people not heard of evening flights???), met with our distributor and went straight for breakfast (our priorities for the entire trip have been food first, then business).

We pulled up outside this unassuming looking place called Saravana Bhavan and went inside, I’d later find out that this place is a local institution which now has around 55 restaurants around the world (including 2 in London), here’s the link to the website.

I let them take care of ordering for me and ended up with two dishes, both of which were pretty much the best food I had on the trip.

The first was idly, kind of bread balls with a couple of pots of samber to dip it in (I looked greedy apparently), oh there’s a spicy coconut chutney off to the side:

I actually wasn’t too fussed about the idly, the samber and the dips were delicious but I’d rather have had them with naan than the idly, I’d probably be stabbed to death for saying this in Chennai…

Anyway, next up was Dosa. Now, it’s difficult to understand the scale of this thing, it was enormous, delicious though, it was quite thin, crispy on one side and soft on the other, not unlike a pancake I guess. It came with 4 dips, one pot of samber, one spicy coconut salsa and two variants with tomato and mint. I was already feeling full after the idly but still wolfed the lot down.

After dinner I had a coffee, which sounds uneventful but it was served in an unusual way. I figured the waiter had been clumsy and spilt coffee into the very deep stainless steel saucer when he brought the coffee over. But no, it’s like this on purpose, the coffee in the saucer is mixed with sugar, you pour it into the main cup to suit your taste

The others opted for chai masala (spicy tea), served in a beer mug..

I made a fuss about the meal being the best I’d had the whole week and that was it, we were coming back for lunch!

The handwashing area – don’t even think about combing your hair! Seriously though, who even uses a comb any more?? I don’t think I’ve used one for 15 years or more, since I was at primary school.

Anyway, we visited a customer in the morning and then popped over to a different branch of Saravana Bhavan in Mylapore, a bit upmarket this one, they’d even invested in a real sign at the front!

My colleague new EXACTLY what it was I needed for lunch and went ahead and ordered the Saravan Special for me, a total of 25 or so separate dishes for just over 2 of her majesty’s pounds. He promised that if I could eat everything he would treat me to dinner.. he knew it was a safe offer!

First up was tomato soup, so far so good, I polished it off in about 20 seconds flat.

Then the main dish turned up, I knew I was defeated (a large bowl of boiled rice turned up just after I took this pic too).

Made a valiant effort though!

As at breakfast time the food was delicious, there was only one dish I didn’t really like (the one that looks like mashed potato on the right, it was actually very sweet) but everything else was good and varying from not at all spicy to just about as hot as I could manage (fortunately there was a bowl of curds which did a great job of cooling the mouth down).

Every time I finished a bowl I’d turn it over confidently, marking that it was done, by the time I was completely full I’d turned over a grand total OF….. wait for it…….. wait for it……. errr 2 bowls. pathetic… I waved the free dinner goodbye and let the waiter take it away.

Then came dessert, actually there had already been one dessert (the little paper bag on the left hand side in the pic of me eating), a sugary milk based thing with someone’s eyelash on it.. Anyway, the dessert, a banana, a scoop of ice cream and something wrapped in a green leaf.

The green leaf looked interesting, I picked it up, started unwrapping it and WAAAAH, promptly dropped it on the table when I saw what was apparently some mashed up wasps inside:

Once my companions had stopped laughing they explained that it wasn’t mashed up wasps, or cockroaches, or bees, or hornets (or any of the other insects I mentioned), it’s actually rose petals… like, what???? come on, rose petals are for making perfume, not food. They made me try it, it minged…

Last up, the breath freshener stuff, 3 bowls to choose from, I haven’t got a clue what was in the first two (although my colleague did confirm that the one on the bottom left is neither dried up maggots nor white mouse poop, that’s mouse poop that’s white by the way, not the poop of a white mouse), the one on the right is sugar crystals though, I know that much. The best bet with this stuff is just to get a bit of each, does a good job of cleansing your pallet!

So, there you have it, Saravan Bhavan, great food at ridiculously cheap prices, well worth a look! Take a look at their website, there’s probably a branch near you (unless you live in China, in which case you can forget about it!)