A Blast of Chocolatey Weekend

It all began with a jar of nutella. Being a crazy chocolate fanatic, I went and bought myself a jar of Nutella from the store at the start of the weekend. Friday evenings are generally considered beginning of the weekend. Weekends in Chennai for me have been synonymous with boredom and frustration. Part of it may be Ambattur too. Chocolate has been a good healer. Call it binge eating, call it a chocaholic speaking , or call it the presence of phenethylamine (PEA) and tryptophan presence in it. PEA is the chemical the body produces which gives you the feeling of being in love. Tryptophan is the chemical which  produces serotonin in the brain. The higher the level of Serotonin, the happier you are.

I began my weekend with a Nutella sandwhich. And somehow the weekend just felt better than the usual boredom I looked forward to. It was followed by Gobi Manchurian from Shanghai Dhaba.

Come Saturday, I realized my regular hangout buddies have chosen to immerse themselves in the religion of India,  Cricket, and kindly chose to leave me with my obligations. Knowing a boring evening lay ahead of me, I drove from North to South Chennai to meet a long lost friend. I fixed myself again a Nutella Sandwhich before the drive which made sure my hunger did not burn out my stomach. It ultimately ended sustaining me for most of the drive.

Elliot’s beach is a popular beach in the South of Chennai. And I had been there just to eat at Mash. It is a popular hangout known for its sizzlers and proximity to the beach. I dined there for the first time about a year ago when my friends and I decided enough of Ambattur, time to head out to the beach. Mash was the defaulted  option for Dining. However, the beach did not let us appreciate its beauty. It was PACKED on the Sunday evening. An Ordinary Sunday and the beach was packed.

The night was different. The beach was empty this time. It was close to 10 pm on a Saturday night.  The beach was serene. It was a cloudless night, the stars blanketing the horizon and hovering over the water. This would have been an ideal night to lay down on the beach with your better half and count the stars under the sky.

Growling and rumbling stomachs led us over to Mash. I wolfed down the prawn dish I had ordered which came a good 45 minute after placing the order, in quantities not enough to satisfy the appetite. “Will that be enough”, a concerned friend asks.

“I’ll order dessert too”, I answered. Restaurants a lot of times, especially late in the night never have the full range of options given in the menu. I gave my order. What came turned out to be two scoops of cold vanilla ice cream over a hot brownie. In one word, Yummy and filling- My second chocolate dish for the day!!

The next day, I woke up when hunger pangs struck. My friend’s cook could not have been more welcome. After guzzling down idlis, we went for shopping and seeing Chennai on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Adyar is very different from Ambattur, and Chennai revealed another side to itself - Rows of quaint little shops, the beach, a decent crowd and ambience, very little dust, a friendly neighborhood.

We had lunch at a place called HOC , short for High on caffeine. This place had its own Foozball table and its own pool table. It also had a very nice ambience with small sofas set around the coffee table to create a relaxed ambience.

“This place is known for two things,” my friend explained, “Corn on toast and Mud. If you are lucky, they won’t screw up the corn on toast. ”

“Mud??”, I asked her.

“You’ll see.”

A short while later the Corn on toast came. It seemed like toast which was drowned in a corn curry of some kind. But driving around Chennai had, for some weird reason increased our appetites. And it did not taste as bad as it looked. Next, came Mud. Guess what it was? Yeah, a  chocolatey drink itself.

It was cold coffee with pieces of oreos and chocolate in it giving an appearance of a mud like texture. I left shortly thereafter and ended the day with a dinner of Maggi.

It was a satisfying weekend in Chennai well spent. The frustration that seemed to lurk with every weekend in Chennai was missing . Maybe it was Adyar, maybe it was the chocolate, or the tryptophan and PEA contents in it. But weekends in Chennai did not seem so bad after all.