Chennai’s newest Andhra Tiffin room serves crispy chilli bajjis and pesarattu

Experience the flavours of Andhra at Andhra Tiffin Room in Cathedral Road, offering traditional dishes with a modern twist in a cozy setting.

Engulfed by the aroma of filter coffee and ghee, we go through the crisp and simple menu at the newly opened Andhra Tiffin Room. We make quick decisions, and start with punugulu, chilli bajji and kesari. 

The compact, cheery Tiffin room is the latest addition to the Amaravathi Restaurants Group, which also owns Karaikudi, Amaravathi, Amaravathi Andhra Home Foods, Kebab Court,Delhi Dhaba, Snofield and Freez Zone and is a part of the Shyam Group, helmed by Neena Reddy. Her daughter, Nivruti Reddy, director, Amaravathi Restaurants Pvt Ltd, who completed her masters in hospitality management at Cornell University, USA , has launched the tiffin room, and is on hand to chat about the space.

The cafe opens by 7 am, welcoming morning walkers and office goers with freshly brewed coffee and tea as well as hot Pongal, medu vada, idly and dosa. Nivruti explains that she’s keeping prices deliberately competitive - it is about ₹ 60 per plate on average - to draw more people though the day. “We want diners to return to us two or three times a week,” she says.

The chilli bajji arrives, crisp and golden brown. It is made by slitting green chillis, sourced from Guntur, and stuffing it with an addicitive mixture made of salt, tamarind and chickpea flour. This is then dipped into a batter, deep fried,sprinkled with chopped onions, and served with mint chutney. It is tasty in that eye-watering way that makes you keep going, despite your mouth being on fire. We douse the heat with spoonfuls of skilfully made kesari. The punugulu, on the other hand, is rather tame and could do with some more flavour.

“We do notprovide refrigerators in the kitchen to ensure that the food is made fresh,” says Nivruti, adding “This means all our chutney and batter is made in batches through the day.” The chutneys are an interesting change from the usual coconut and tomato varieties you get in most dosa joints. Our favourite is the allam pachadi made by simmering jaggery and gingelly oil with ginger. It is served alongside pesarattu, made with green moong dal and rice, and also their pallilu (peanut) chutney.

Nivruti says they want to focus on region-specific dosa varieties, so besides the pesarattu they also have a kaaram dosa, generously slathered with a paste made of red chilli, garlic and oil. The dosa is served with peanut chutney, tomato chutney (a fiery combination of red chilli, onion and tomato) and coconut chutney.  For the less adventurous, there are also regular ghee roasts and masala dosas available.

Although some of the items do seem familiar, they are given a twist here, inspired by the food Nivruti grew up eating. The podi idli, for example, is made by sauteing minced onions, curry leaves, garlic and idli podi and tossing the idlis in it. We also try the MLA Pesarattu, which is stuffed with rava upma.