Nalas Aappakadai, Annanagar, Chennai

Nalas Aappakadai is a relatively recent chain of restaurants in Chennai. The chain of restaurants is centred around innovations on the Appam which is the South Indian bread/ roti made with rice batter. The appam is a wonderful preparation and goes particularly well with meat stew and sea food dishes. The fluffy rice batter offering is worthy of

receiving a tribute by a restaurant chains with Aappakadai aims to and largely succeeds. Given a choice however I will rather keep to the appam and meat stew combination.

The restaurant is an attempt at the South Indian style merging with 21st century fast food prone India. The feel is like that of a fast food outlet, bright lights, bright colours with the menu being loudly displayed on the signage opposite and open kitchen. The menu cards are however on the tables and the waiters take orders at the table, and serve the food.

The menu card at Aappakadai basically consists of three parts, regular South Indian meals, set meals with the Appam as the main staple with meat/ vegetable preparations and a whole range of variations on the Appam starting from Kheema to multi flavoured, multi coloured Appams.

I ordered two dishes, one was the set meal with Appam and Chicken Chettinad, the other was a chicken kheema appam. I was unfortunately disappointed by both. The appams served in the set meal were not the fluffy appam I have had at most restaurants, it was too crispy, slightly cold and difficult to break. People who have tasted the appam know how critical it is for the appam to be soft and hot - the appams I was served with the set meal were definitely up to the mark. The chicken chettinad was the most disappointing part of the meal. The gravy was very spicy as Chettinad gravy usually is, but did not have any flavour of the meat - seemed as if they have loads of gravy pre cooked and decide to serve the meat/ egg/ vegetable depending on the order. They served two pieces of chicken along with the meat, the pieces were with bone and had very little meat on them. I do not necessarily mind bone but the pieces were one of the worst pieces you find on the bird and you would think twice before serving them to guests coming at your home, let alone those paying for food at a restaurant.

The chicken kheema appam was interesting, it was basically a sort of chicken ommelette cooked on the Appam, the insides of the appam, the hollow side had this scrambled mix of egg, chicken mince and chillis on it. Decent taste, but i think that it would have tasted far better if they had served chicken kheema, egg bhurji and nice, hot appam separately. I may have ordered all the wrong dishes, to be fair the place was doing decent business but I fear that in an effort to go completely retail and mass produce the appam and the side dishes, the essence of the preparations have been compromised. To me that is not an acceptable trade off.

You may still go to Aappakadai if you have not tasted the appam before and are not a fan. From a curiousity perspective tasting the various preparations can be fun. Do not go there for having a regular appam meal. If you do go there however, you may be advised to steer clear of the preparations that I have mentioned - particularly the chicken chettinad meal with appams.

A meal for two at Nalas Aappakadai without drinks will cost you approximately Rs 300/-

How to get there: Nalas Aappakadai is on 3rd Avenue Annanagar just below Kebab Court restaurant.