Food Trail- 2- Anjappar Restaurant, Farwaniya, Kuwait

Ever had a meal where water was the best of the delicacies?

That was what was unveiled at the Anjappar Restaurant in Kuwait.

A vegetarian is almost always a downtrodden sect in food cycle, be it in the class 5 science textbook or in any restaurant for that matter. Vegetarian food lacks variety and is often a lackluster course. While the only vegetarian restaurants do justice on the aspect, the others are a letdown.

The story of a letdown begins here:

Dining at a restaurant chain renowned for its Chettinad cuisine, present in almost 10 countries across 3 continents, the expectations were sky high.

A ride of almost 30 kms, 30 minutes into finding the restaurant and a parking, what we had was camaraderie of disappointment and frustration.

Our order: tomato soup, veg kothu porotta, appam, veg kofta and coffee.

Tomato soup was watered down and a dollop of cream was added on top of it to mask its awfulness. The veg kothu porotta, a traditional Tamil fusion dish was absolute mockery to its ancestry, being too salty and lacking the finesse. The appam had an undercooked center, while the crust was crispy and kind of tasty.

The dish that topped the comedy of errors was the veg Kofta. The gravy tasted as if it was made using the second grade Chinese Manchurian masala available in the markets. The veg dumplings in the dish were nothing to complain about, but even if it is a cherry on the top of a pile of garbage, it becomes inedible.

The last straw of the meal –coffee, well, nothing good or bad would come out of writing about it.

The service was top notch on a scale to 0 to negative infinity. The waiters were throwing plates to the table with a grudge on their faces.  

Rewind to a year and a half back: I dined solo at Anjappar in Chennai for lunch. Amazing food it was. The spicy kara kuzhambu complemented the sweltering heat and chilled water. Reasonably priced with pretty decent service, it was a good choice to dine there.  

The verdict- if you are vegetarian, avoid the place. If that isn't a possibility, at least avoid eating, just watch them dine.

The bill: KWD 5.100 ($17) for 2

Happiness: *1/2

Food Trail-1- Udupi Restaurant, Sharq

 

Being a vegetarian in a predominantly non-vegetarian country is kind of an uphill task. The number of vegetarian restaurants are quite a few, hence eating out might turn out to be an experience appalling than appealing.

From a vegetarian whose occasional visits to the shawarma joints are masked by a pretentious veil of notoriety and obscurity, here begins a journey of eating and documenting vegetarian food across Kuwait.

Food, as we know, fuels the body. As for me, it fuels passion more than life.

For a vegetarian, Udupi cuisine is as indispensable as salt in a dish. The most prominent vegetarian food chain in Kuwait, Udupi restaurant serves as the best option for dosas and thalis while the unexplored other varieties seems forgotten in dingy corners of the menu card. What is a more apt way to start an attempt to be a food blogger than to try to review the best vegetarian cuisine of the subcontinent. 

Nestled in a cozy spot amidst the hustle bustle of the city, the Sharq branch of the chain was almost full as we came in for a quick dinner. While the menu listed North Indian cuisine, we decided against it and placed the safest bet- dosas.

Our order was curd vada, masala dosa and onion rava dosa and coffee to wash it down.

The extremely soggy vada dipped in sour curd was a pretty bad start to appease our ravenous hunger. The masala dosa were a fitting reply to the bad setback done by vadas. Eating through crisp outer layers to reach the "highlight"- aloo masala, we dug in with great expectations.

As the saying goes, with great expectation comes great disappointment, this was a classic example. Oddly shaped potatoes mashed with bland masala- something that did not do justice to the looks as well as the palate.

The onion rava dosa was crisp and had copious amounts on onion which were charred to perfection. While the batter had a hint of age, it was far from being a bad choice.

The sambar served was a distant cousin of a dish whose next door neighbor knew the real Udupi sambar. The chutneys were the best of the lot. Something that tasted like gongura made up one chutney and that was mmmmmm..... The other one was a coconut based chutney which had nothing to complain about.

The filter coffee served here was basically like a cheap Chinese rip off of the original- the infamously famous traditional filter coffee. Overly sweet but drinkable, period.

The verdict: Batter matters.

The cost: KWD 2.500 for 2 hungry and crazily food fanatic adults

Happiness: **1/2