Mister Madras

Now that I’ve found a gang for myself, there is no more holding back. Despite the fact this blog is about my 2nd ride, by now I’ve done 5 major rides and this will hopefully be the last breakfast ride I’ll be penning down. This is predominantly because the breakfast rides aren’t long and are barely a 100 kms one which doesn’t require to be archived. Then why is this trip making its way to the blog? Read on to find out… Itinerary This ride was as straight-forward as it can get. We started at the usual Velavan Motors Greams Road branch and took the Porur – Poonamallee route to get to Kanchipuram. What’s new And I think this is the longest this particular sub-category is ever going to look. After the first ride, I knew things are going to get serious and obviously, I was hooked on to this right from the first twist of my accelerator at the highway. Spent a mini fortune on the gears but hey, safety comes with a price. Lucky me, the shopping happened...

As a movie buff, I had my doubts on how the director duo Pushkar-Gayathri would balance the star power of two stars – Vijay Sethupathi and Madhavan in an equal manner. I got that cleared way earlier than I expected when the Statutory Warnings were played. The English lines were read out by Maddy while the Tamil ones were by Sethupathi. That was the first of many moments that blew me away as I sunk into my seat with a tub of popcorn. Going with the title, the film is indeed a modern take on the famous Vikram-Vedhalam stories. The director duo subtly puts this across in a couple of instances. There’s one scene where Maddy is taking Sethupathi to put an end to his menace in a jeep when the latter, from the back seat, leans on Maddy as if he’s on him from the back. In an another following scene, during a face off, Sethupathi literally gets on Maddy’s back in order to choke him down. Not to mention the umpteen questions (or say riddles) that are asked by Vedha to Vikr...

With a few biggies releasing this Friday, the choice for the audience is finally a plenty after quite a while. I honestly didn’t have many expectations when I sat down to watch the press show of Meesaya Murukku, Hiphop Tamizha Aadhi’s acting and directorial debut. That’s probably the reason the film pleasantly shocked me. The film captures the life of a regular guy who finished school and enters an engineering college. There’s the usual gang of friends who help him with love and help us with humour, there are the dreaded seniors who rag for the sake of it and of course, there’s love too. But that’s where the similarities stop. Meesaya Murukku is fresh in its approach to a rather simple story of how an underdog faces embarrassments, failures, and pain to rise to the top at the end. The film can part be called as Aadhi’s biography and his narration of the path he walked through has been given in the most entertaining way possible. Meesaya Murukku ...

Occasion:      The Royal Repast Location:     J Hind, Grand by GRT Hotels, T Nagar Duration:     The entire month of July 2017 J Hind is a restaurant that I’ve frequented a number of times after falling for it the first time I visited GRT for a night stay when they reopened after renovation. I was lucky enough to be one of the first to check out the restaurants in this amazing property. Do check out my take on J Hind and Bazaar as they’re some of the best our town has to offer. Even though the subsequent visits were good and ironically – paid ones that I went as a regular customer and not as a food blogger, I didn’t write about it. But this time, I was once again bowled over by their latest menu that’s got ‘royal’ written all over it. The Royal Repast can be called as the glorification of one of the best cuisines of our soil. Nawabi food is known for its rich opulence and when a hotel has ‘Grand’ in their name, we know we’...

Ah, it’s been a while. Been stuck with other posts that it’s been ages since I posted a food post, so here we go. After a long time, I was at Great Kebab Factory and for a change, this was the one in Radisson next to the airport (GST road) and not to the one in Egmore that I’ve been a number of times. My foodie pal Shabnam and I were invited to the Udta Ludhiana, the Punjabi food fest. Chef Gurmeet Singh had come in all the way from Punjab especially for this festival and this post is about my experience at this fest. And oh, apologies for the low-res images. The lighting wasn’t good enough to use my DSLR (not that it would’ve created a humongous difference). An amazing aspect about this restaurant is the fact that they have separate kitchens to dish out the veg and non-veg food. And if that’s the amount of effort they take, one can be assured about the utensils and plates they use too to be segregated. I love how they bring in the ‘factory...