Madras Cafe has it's moments . It's a decent place to stop over for a quick bite of south Indian tiffin tossed up in a fusion avatar. It is predominantly the usual south cuisine customised to give it a twist. You have snacks in the form of cheese fingers, potato wedges, assorted platters etc in the ayal naattu (outside land) section and in the namma ooru (home land) part you have your vadais and bhajjis.
The place specialises on dosa's with a truckload of varieties and you also have your usual idli, chappathi, poori and also idiappam, appam, Chole batoora et al. They also have something called Barotizza, an indianised version of pizza with toppings on a chappathi base and also kothu barottas and barotta rolls. Also there is an area called Hall of sandwiches with many stuffed cheese based ones. Also there are variety rices and beverages and smoothies and shakes for finishers.
We had a mix of tiffin items such as podi dosai, onion uthappam, paneer tikka masala dosai, fried podi idli ,kaara cheesy varuval and a filter kaapi and masala chaaya to round off. The fries were oozing with cheese on the top, however the bottom part was left orphaned. The tanginess was missing a bit. The podi dosai was also ok but however it was just podi smeared without oil in it which was a bit of a let down. The paneer tikka masala was perhaps the best we ate here with the triangular dosa having abundant pieces of paneer masala and also it went well with the chutneys and sambar. The onion uthappam was strictly ok and nothing to regale about. The podi idly which took oh so long to be brought to the table was worth the wait and was well deep fried and had a lovely punch to it with podi in magnanimous quantity enveloped all over the idli's.
The place is neat but isn't something that will work big on the ambiance front. The big poster drawing of Madras with the Mylapore backdrop and the Marena beach tries giving it an authentic flavor. The Hindi music playing in the background however sticks out sorely taking the charm away.
The prices are pretty reasonable and par for the course. All the items we had set us back by 500 bucks and a bit which wouldn't really make you slouch. The service at times had it's issues with water not being refilled promptly and also time taken to bring the stuff which was much longer than expected. Also the lack of tissue papers in the tables were irritating. And the disappointment of not having many things from the menu adds to the woes.
The Madaras Kafe has its shares of hits and misses. It surely isn't a bad place to head out for some tasty south indian food being a tad different than the usual.
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