CHENNAI: Amid the tumbling necessities of everyday life, few have time enough to notice how much food serves as quiet footnotes to local history. Set aside two hours on a regular Friday evening and you’ll find that the sweet shop that sells your favourite samsas is twice as old as you and the jannal in the wall has remained unchanged for decades even as the town around it grew and got crowded. Well, if you’re with Sridhar Venkataraman at his food walk that is.
The food-walk veteran led yet another group of enthusiasts down Mylapore’s small and constantly busy lanes, introducing them to the culinary treasures of the temple town, as part of the Mylapore Fest. Having done it for years, Sridhar ensures that these ventures meet the criteria he’s carefully listed out over the years. “I start every walk with a map; only when I make it, I know if you can organise it.
There are certain logistics to it. It can’t be over two hours long, we can’t walk for more than two kilometres, we have to include around six joints on the schedule. Only with all this in place do I call for a walk,” he details. And it shows. From packed podi idlis and kozhukattai at Selvi Stores to ice-cream at the crowd-pleaser Senthil Softy Zone and the legendary rose milk at Kaalathi Kadai, the stroll covered many of the region’s familiar delights. But Sridhar had something new to offer at almost every stop — that Senthil Softy Zone had ambitiously set out to open two more branches but eventually had to shut them down over losses; that Maami Mess, which has recently evolved from a kaiyendhi bhavan to an air-conditioned joint, had kozhukattais on offer on Fridays.
Sridhar had another interesting piece of information about a acommon phenomenon in Mylapore’s eateries — none (almost) of them serve meals. “Serving meals would require a bigger set-up, seating space. They will have to plan how much they will have to cook. That’s why these joints have the ‘variety rice’ concept. It sells better. It also ensures that they can finish their stock by the end of day. You can be sure you are not being served yesterday’s food,” he explains.
The participants, many of them local residents, were not short on anecdotes of their own. Stopping at the Sri Karpagambal Kapali Sweets Stall, they took the time to explain to the uninitiated that samsas is the street name for onion samosas. They followed it up with a debate on where one can get good Punjabi samosas in the city. It was a college student — being part of the demographic that Senthil Softy Zone catered to — who listed the specials for the day. Srinivas, who had shown up just to see what he could learn anew about his neighbourhood, offered alternatives to the peanut shop on the itinerary. Uma, who had spent her childhood among these shops, but was only now risking the intake of street cuisine, remarked that the Jannal Bajji Kadai used to be a favourite haunt of actor Rajinikanth.
While the food walk hit many a must-see eatery, Mylapore’s streets had much more to offer in terms of simple, everyday food — from carts of fresh vegetables to tables of home-made food and drinks lining the pavement. But it’s the gamut of comforting smells that’ll have you thirsting for more.
From the children who had a free run at every stop to the elderly couple who were in it just for the sights — everyone was left sated. Those yearning for more wandered off to the food street set up for the Mylapore Festival. But in two hours, the food walk had accomplished something visceral — it had introduced another handful of people to the culinary testaments to the way of life in this part of the city. And isn’t that something! For food may not be the way into a man’s heart, it certainly is the quickest way to the city’s soul.