Chennai’s young restaurateurs celebrate street food and home-style meals

A fresh crop of restaurateurs are finding slick, economical ways to repackage classic meals, encouraging customers to dive into traditional flavours in comfort

In a plush, tree-lined bylane of Alwarpet, in a neighbourhood accustomed to buttery croissants and French- pressed coffee, sits a little corner mess where you can have unlimited portions of rice, dried fish sambal, meen kuzhambu, chicken curry, rasam, sambar, kootu and poriyal for just ₹160. At lunch on a heat-stricken weekday, all five tables under a quietly humming AC are full.

“It is heartening to see walk-ins from every demographic: from security guards to executives in huge SUVs,” says 30-year-old Vikram Reddy, one of the four entrepreneurs behind Kaaram Karaikudi Mess. He pauses mid-conversation to bid adieu to an elderly guest with a cane, being helped out gently by a young companion — the duo has been a regular ever since the two-week-old restaurant opened.

Repeat customers — and the patronage of established chefs and some celebrities — are Vikram’s proof that he was right in his basic business premise: “Everyone misses simple traditional food, and wants to eat it in comfort.” It is a premise that cannot be surprising, but is only now picking up tempo amid Chennai’s food entrepreneurs.

To that end, 23-year-olds Aravind Suresh and Richie Richard have spent the last eight months serving claypot fish curries in the most comfortable setting of all: your home. The duo’s brand Meen Satti gained popularity in multiple pockets of the city throughout lockdowns, with a simple, fuss-free offering: home delivery of a family-sized box packed with rice, fish fry and meen kuzhambu in clay sattis. “Two separate sattis: one that the meen kuzhambu is cooked in, and one that it is packed in,” clarifies Aravind.

Growing popularity meant that Meen Satti needed a larger kitchen early this year, so Richie and Aravind moved to Ekkattuthangal. Opened less than a fortnight ago, the new Meen Satti space boasts an “experience store front” that seats two groups of diners on regular tables and one on a raised floor table, only on pre-booking.

What’s the experience here, you ask? Says Richard, “We have a dine-in expert who guides guests through the right way to eat a fish head, and things like that.” This team is clearly serious about fish.

Frills are minimal, and the biggest reason for the success of these food outlets is the recipe. While Vikram and his partners Vaishnavi Ravishankar, Anush Rajasekaran and Swetha Rengasamy rely on the expertise of traditional cooks bringing in recipes from Madurai and Chennai, Meen Satti has just one person to thank: Aravind’s mother.