What to expect from Chennai’s latest pubs post-lockdown

From Royapettah to Velachery, the city has seen a rush of post-pandemic bar launches, flaunting craft cocktails, giant sports screens and inventive menus

The Wild Garden Cafe at Amethyst has always been popular for its relaxing oasis of greenery, where customers can eat crepes amid hidden lotus ponds. Now, it is busier than ever before as you can add a glass of wine to your meal, courtesy the recently established Chennai Star Club in an enclosed segment of the main building.

The newly acquired, limited liquor licence means that some parts of the property now have the wherewithal to serve some quintessentially Chennai concoctions, dreamt up by bartender Sakthi Dasan. Consider a drink of white rum, sugarcane juice, and freshly muddled ginger, balanced well enough that the sugarcane refreshes you right before the rum hits. Or heady minty nannari mojitos, watermelon martinis, or Earl Grey tea-based vodkas.

Inside the club, those with membership cards can lean back on 40-year-old wooden furniture and gaze at an impressive reprint of a centuries-old Bourne & Shepherd photograph of the Calcutta Harbour. Or, have the erstwhile Maharaja of Bobbili looming over your shoulder as you enjoy a quiet glass of whisky sour.  

The Purple Chameleon in in Phoenix MarketCity, Velachery, meanwhile, is all about bells and whistles. An innocuous door on a regular corridor of the mall leads inwards to a sudden riot of lights and colours. Inside, neon flamingoes jostle for space with equally bright pop culture signage; cocktails come with billows of smoke entrapped in bubbles; and DJs focus on heightening your buzz with their beats. It is a space of excited conversation and raucous laughter — if you want to recline quietly and dissect the finer flavours of a dainty dish, The Purple Chameleon is not for you.

And yet, plenty of thought has gone into the menu: there are 13 signature cocktails. These include the namesake purple chameleon: a heady concoction that uses gin infused with the blue peaflower, popular for its ability to change colour from blue to purple. It comes in a clear round vessel that gushes smoke, balanced gingerly atop a white disk whose rim is alight with colours.

Glitz aside, the idea is to bring in flavour notes of different parts of the country, “which is why each of these cocktails has an ingredient representing a different state. Our black buck cocktail, for instance, features mustard-infused tequila,” explains mixologist Nitin Tiwari. 

Chef Navin Prasad’s food is playful in a different way, with twists on everything from regional street food to Japanese fried chicken, karaage. A chakli chaat comprises sev, curd and boondi, served on a thick, crunchy chakli or murukku instead of papdi. The base is uncompromisingly strong, the flavours match, it all just — fits. The slightly dry karaage, however, is more batter-crust than chicken, and needs to be rescued by an excellent onion sauce. A pleasant surprise is the til-wali macchi: small chunks of oh-so-soft fish coated in sesame seeds and cooked in the tandoor. The mild flavours are punctuated by sudden kicks of mustard. Desserts, like rum-soaked gulab jamun served in a pool of creamy rabri, are over-zealous with alcohol. Balance is not the strong suit here, but who cares? It’s all good fun anyway.