Hi All 🙂 Hope you are good. I’m back after ages to write my new blog on this restaurant – Anandam Restaurant, that’s a part of Hotel Maris – which is about 50 yrs old in 2025! It’s a part of the Maris Group of Companies. The place is easily connected to Mount Road, Gopalapuram, Marina Beach, Santhome & Mylapore.

I have earlier blogged about this place in early 2020 before COVID19 and the rest is history. I had a chance to try their Meals as it has a fan following and I tried it at last on 19-Apr-25.

The meal is served in a banana leaf. Usually in other restaurants, the waiters will bring the leaves and place it before us. Once the water is served, we will proceed to wash it. Here I found the banana leaf fully drenched in water and ready to serve the food. Let me explain to you the full menu in the picture above.

Appalam, Small Poori (in the shape of sweet samosa), Pickle, Saagu, Cabbage – coconut veggie, Potato, Onion – Cucumber raita, Salt, Semiya – Javvarisi Payasam, Pappu, Curd, Rasam, Sambhar, Kara Kuzhambu. The white rice is unlimited and will be served as & when asked. Meals Video

I started with the poori and saagu. It was mind-blowing tbh. Usually this size is not served when you order poori from the tiffin menu. You are served with 2 small pooris. Then I started with the Pappu rice. It was quite unsalted to my taste and I just had a limited quantity.

Next comes the sambhar rice. It was like the usual homemade one and not spicy. I liked this and it just slid through my food pipe. With the given appalam the size of the 1 regular dominos pizza, it was a good side-dish to the sambhar rice.

This is the Kaara Kuzhambu rice. I would rate it a bit average and it was not thick. Usually this dish will be a standout as people used to have this as a side for curd rice. This was not like that.

Rasam – it was an absolute blast. The taste it had and the flavours added to it made it a good pick of the meals. I had some Pappu left in the cup and I added it to the rasam rice. I used to have rasam rice with Pappu at home during weekends and I tried the same thing there. Loved it to the core! ❤

Kadaisiya than vantharu Mr. Vinayak – curd rice. The quality of curd used was ultimate and I totally loved it. I wanted to try the pickle with it but the lemon pickle given was bland 😦 I went with the balance veggies and appalam and this ended by meal journey.

The appalam was a big hit with me as I used it as a side for almost all rices I ate. The Payasam had the right amount of sugar and that was a correct pick for this meal. I drank some rasam when I asked for refill and it was out of the world.

Some things which I want to highlight here are:

1. I had to wait for sometime to get a refill of the veggies – potato, saagu, cabbage.
2. There was quite a big wait time for white rice to be served, may be due to the crowd as it was a Saturday afternoon.
3. When the waiter sees your plate / leaf is empty, they don’t instantly come with the next item you need. That actually makes a big difference IMO.
4. The refill time for sambhar, rasam and kara Kuzhambu also was on the same lines as the veggies.

It costed INR 275/- per meal and along with 5% GST, totally I paid 825 bucks. I feel this is on a higher end and if it were around 200, that’s a good deal. I recommend you to try for the experience of eating some good food in a banana leaf and nothing else. I might be wrong but to be honest, this is what I felt.

That’s it for the day and see you guys in the next post! 🙂

Comment here once you try it and subscribe to my YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/@EpomeSoruThan