Basera- A BBQ Restaurant on ECR, Chennai (Madras), India

Basera Restaurant, Injambakkam, Nr. Prarthana Theater, ECR, Chennai(Madras), India
3* Restaurant/ Rs 408/$8 (Veg) and Rs 450/$9 (Non-Veg) /Open to lush garden

Happy and Satisfied Customer

Courteous staff, great BBQ and a fantastic dessert layout.  The lush garden is a very romantic setting, but available only for dinner!! During lunch, the A/C indoors serves a buffet.  The place is extremely clean (toilets too!!) and everyone is courteous. The Manager comes to your table to inquire after every course. We ate a buffet in the cool confines of the indoor restaurant. The diners are IT-types that come in large groups on bikes and sub-compact cars, families with kids, lovey-dovey couples like Vaishnavi and myself, and local elites in 7-series BMWs.  There were quite a few regulars but we were treated no differently from them.

Dessert Table

The first thing to say about the food is that the dessert was extremely good.  The fruit salad was fresh, cut evenly and tasted good. The caramel custard tasted was so delicious, that I am out of words to describe it.  Of course they had a payasam/kheer and ice cream.

BBQ: Left are the vegetarian and right are the meat

Lemon-mint drink and the 5 starters

The buffet appetizer had five veg. and five non-veg items.  Five were BBQ items including prawns, mutton, chicken, paneer, and a veggie kabobs. They BBQ on a nice chargoal grill in the middle of the table. Being October and in A/C, we did not feel uncomfortable.  It might be the case in peak summer.  The BBQ items were extremely tasty and were cut to the right size, seasoned very well.  The meats and the veggies felt fresh and firm with a little juice.  They actually made sure that the meats and veggies were placed separately. This was important because my wife is a strict vegetarian.  The other five were fried items- fish fry, veg wontons, gobi manchurian, tandoori chicken and aloo tikki.  The wonton was a little soggy but the rest were very well done.  The fish tikka was immersed in a little too much spices and grease. So, it was a little suspicious.

You could match the appetizers with a lemon-mint drink which was quite refreshing.  We actually requested for a refill three times. They had soda drinks but we did not bother. 

Moore mulaghai- delicious

Salad, Yogurt and pickles

The main course was a combination of North Indian dhals, channa and naans with South India rasam and curds.  The curds was hard and very tasty, with no added sugar.  The The best part meal was the moore mulaghai (chillies soaked in buttermilk,dried then fried), a South Indian accompaniment to rice + curds. The dhaal and the kadai vegetables were very tasty.

All in all, it made our marriage anniversary a extremely good one.  Then we were off to pick up our daughter from the grandparents house.

Ambiance without the Ambiance at Lunch

Babal da Punjabi Dabha (Very flavourful and tasty khaana (food) Average per person is Rs. 200/$4)  

Chennai is not known for anything beyond South Indian foods.  There are so many varieties of South Indian food that it can really keep you occupied for years trying them all.  Once in a while, you want to venture out to something else.  One such meal is Punjabi khaana. Babal da Punjabi Dabha is right across the road from KJ Hospital. Most North Indian places in Chennai are expensive and have a huge amount of cream/sugar added to the dishes.  Dabha Express is probably an exception but that is for another day!!  North Indian places are also very pretentious.  Anytime a friend recommends a nice quiet place, I am always game to try it.

This time it was my dear buddy Manesh Sehgal.  I was talking to him about some business ideas that I had.  He gave me a good and quick rundown on the entire retail industry.  My MBA did not teach me these things and I paid over $60K for the coveted piece of paper from a top-ten school!!

Back to food.  This place has absolutely no ambiance.  They have soft music, white tablecloth, low lighting and a few photos on the walls.  The ambiance is really about who you are with and the type of conversation.  In this case, Manesh was it.  Manesh has been a food connoisseur since our days together at DB (Don Bosco). Snacks would be the puff at the Cafeteria and paratha kurma lunch at Atlantic Hotel.  In between, there would be the munching of the fluffy and flaky samosa at the Travancore Egg Mart. Back to the Dabha, the fact that he knew the place and knew what to order was great.

We started off with Fish Tikka.  The fish was firm and soft, the flavors were embedded.  It looked like a perfectly cut slice of fish! There was nothing dripping from it. If you wanted more flavor, onions, chillis and a green chutney were provided on the side. Manesh had his with the spicy chutney and mine was more American!  To prevent any taste degradation, we decided no juices, lassi or soft drinks.  Next we got the palak paneer and butter chicken. The paneer pieces were big and the chicken had butter, but no visible cream.  They were a little spicy but not overdone.  There were no bones in either the fish or the chicken.

The best part of the meal were the naans.  There were fresh, right from the tandoori, and just melted in my mouth.  One of the best naans I have ever tasted outside of a home.  We had the plain, letcha and garlic naan.  The garlic naan was the best of the lot.  After we finished the gravy, we ordered a butter naan.  It was awesome to just eat the naan.

The waiters were always handy and brought the food/water very quickly.  They did not object that we were a party of 2 and had taken a table for six.  I would definitely go back with my family.  Ambiance would then be my daughter talking!!!!