Welcome Hotel, Pursaiwalkkam

Hey guys. Hope you are good. It’s good to be back again for another blog. This time it was a new Facebook friend of mine, who told me about this hotel at Pursaiwalkkam. I asked if she could take me to the place and give a brief about the hotel. She was so kind enough to take me from Motcham Theatre bus stop to the Hotel and again dropping me back to the place after the dinner.

I was waiting for 29C at the Mylapore Tank bus stop, but god had other ideas. It was 29 that came to my rescue that had a different route and not the usual Stella Maris – MOP Vaishnav – WCC route. It was Royapettah Hospital – Pudhupet – Dasprakash route. I reached the place earlier than the usual and was waiting for her. Then we proceeded to the Hotel.

There was parking available for 2 wheelers just outside the entrance and the security showed us the place to park.

That was the menu written beautifully in Tamizh just near the entrance.

We went upstairs to the 1^st floor that had some open view of the area. It was cool to see flashy lights all through the road viz., A2B, Madharsha, etc.

The hall was supposedly empty and we finally had a table. Then began our conversation about every topic that existed on earth mainly on Facebook (Mark, thanks da)! The server came to our table and we ordered the USP of the hotel, Idly Sambhar.

Idly Sambhar – INR 30/-

They serve 2 idlies per plate and some ghetti coconut chutney. Please find the link of video showing how sambhar flows from the jug to the plate – https://youtu.be/Xv66biDwxUQ

You can see that the idly is experiencing sambhar-gasm and it was fantabulous to eat it. Some spoons of idly-sambhar went into my tummy without the chutney, as you forget to see what’s next to the plate. The sambhar needs a special mention here. The other hotels I have eaten so far have yellow coloured sambhar but here it has high tone of red. It also tastes good and that’s why people keeping coming to it again and again. Kudos to the team for maintaining it all these years. So we can say that Ratna Café is to Triplicane in the same terms Welcome Hotel is to Pursaiwalkkam. It is so sad to note that I do not have the picture of the sambhar-gasmed idly.

Though we were experiencing our Idly-Sambhar, we were still talking uncontrollably and the entire crowd had their eyes on us. We were laughing our hearts out. Then we ordered the next big thing – Chola Poori.

Chola Batura – INR 70/-

The typical North Indian breakfast, this is served here only from the evenings till night. I like this Punjabi dish so much that, I often ask for an extra cup of Chola / Chickpea / Bengal gram (dei ethane per da veipinga ithuku)! The Batura is too big to host an airplane inside it and it was fluffy. Just see the smile on the server’s face while bringing it! Ithan ya namma aalunga .. ipdi kudutha thane sapda thonum! Chickpeas are a rich source of proteins and Wikipedia says it is about 7500 yrs old and one of the earliest cultivated crops.

I finished the poori with the chola but she just had the masala from the chola and didn’t have the chickpea. Surprisingly, I didn’t ask for an extra cup (<3)! We skipped the milk/juice and asked for the bill. It was INR 219/-. I said I will pay it but she was adamant and paid it by herself. Thank you so much Akilaa for being such a wonderful host and showing me all the places, taking me throughout Pursaiwalkkam and finally waiting till I boarded the 29C bus. Yar saar panuva intha maari, antha manasu iruke .. athan kadavul.