Keeping authenticity in mind but bringing in her own flavours with the right blend of ingredients to enhance the taste in the finer nuances of cooking is what makes Madhulika Sunderam’s expertise special at Chef’s Table.
“What we serve here is not served in any other restaurant in Chennai,” says Madhulika, the owner and chief chef at Chef’s Table, a restaurant that opened in Chennai’s Poes Garden earlier this year. “All the vegetables are home-grown at my mother’s organic mini-farm in Ooty.” In Chef’s Table garden, the fragrance of lemon grass, basil, and other herbs assault your nostrils as you walk in through the gate. The 28-year-old is assisted by four other chefs.
Smoked pumpkin with dollops of grape jam drizzled over with sour cream, marinated tofu with Udon noodles served with leeks, spring onions and bok choy, beetroot ravioli, salmon, pork belly are some of her signature dishes.
For dessert, there’s baked chocolate with toffee ice cream with caramelised nuts, hung curd and honey roast peaches with blue cheese, chocolate bourbons, orange cake served with spiced icecream. Each costs `525. A meal for two is for `2,000-2,500.
Madhulika is the great grand-daughter of late C P Ramaswamy Iyer, a barrister and orator from Chennai.
She is also the grand daughter of cricketer C D Gopinath. She studied at Lady Andal school in Chennai, after which she attended Pierrefeu, a Swiss finishing school in Switzerland, where she learnt to bake and brew, apart from lessons in grooming. She found her calling in 2009 at Le Cordon Bleu London, a culinary institute, where she learnt the intricacies of cooking.
“The training in cooking we received there was very rigorous. I learnt perfection, and today when I am in the kitchen, nobody wants to be there,” she laughs.
On returning to Chennai in 2010, she ran a catering service from home. To expand her culinary skills, she joined the Ballymaloe Cookery School in Ireland in 2013 for four months, after which the globetrotting chef was back in Chennai putting all she had learnt abroad to use in her mother’s kitchen.
In 2014, she started The Brew Room in Hotel Savera in Chennai with her sister-in-law Nivruti Reddy, which was famous for its soufflé omelettes served with combos teamed to go with coffee flavours. The unique feature of the menu at Chef’s Table is that it varies and is not stereotyped. The colour scheme of the interiors of this 56-seater restaurant is in soft muted tones and minismalistic, with plenty of space between tables.
You can also opt for a private Chef's Table and watch Madhulika cook her specials for you.