Madurai Kumar Mess - Vadapalani

Madurai Kumar Mess

The building next to Lakshman sruthi near Vadapalanion 100 ft road

If you are driving down from Koyabedu, go past  vadapalani Signal and this comes to your left just before the Lakshman sruthi (the music place) cross road junction.

 Ambiance: As you enter, while your mind starts gathering the 90's songs starting with madura marikozhundu vaasam... all you hear is clambering of cutlery and plates and murmurs from tables.If you are a seafood lover, the boneless crab and prawn fry glow sign boards would hypnotize you to order it sooner or later

7 of us fit ourselves compactly in a table for 6 leaving no space for any dishes to be placed and not knowing who is eating from whose leaf. However, the guys who attended to our table were quick to clear empty bowls and cups and get us new dishes

Service: Was prompt and suggestions kept pouring. May be after seeing us clicking picks of every single dish, they arrived like "machaan peru madhura... rekka katti parandhu varum rendu kaalu gudhura"


Food: I missed out on the mutton kola urundai 200/- and pigeon meat 240/- which my folks told me was just ordinary.  I joined only from the below items :(

Ayira meen kozhambu 220/-: This is a "romba pamous" dish of Madurai as these tiny fish just melt in your mouth. There is a cumbersome process to clean these fishes with milk and water to remove the tiny sand that might be. It tasted good if not for a friend picking up a long hair strand "idhu ayira illa mayira". The steward rushed to our table, picked it and romped back to the kitchen only to bring it in a different container :). We didn't make any fuss about it.

Brain fry 200/-:  Soft egg like tasting goat brains. you either like it or hate it. It gets cooked with a lot of ginger garlic to do away with the strong odor (kavichi vasanai). Aatu moolai saaptu nee aatu mandaiya

Suvarotti 200/-:  I would have liked both these dishes to be a little spiced up

Goat spleen rich in hemoglobin and iron good for pregnant/anemic women to supplement their iron requirement.

Suvarotti/wall sticker peyar karanam/naming reason: Back in the Villages, the spleen that is very moist unlike liver, is patted on to a fresh cemented wall and it sticks to it and becomes hard as the wall absorbs the moisture. It's then peeled off of the wall and cooked .

Mutton chukka 200/-: Mutton which must have been cooked dry was a lil wet here and tasted okay

 

Mutton biryani 180/-: My bench mark of any seeraga samba biryani is Dindugal Venu. This one didn't even come close to it in terms of the taste or the pieces of mutton or the mutton dalcha accompaniment.
Once we recently had a far better tasting biryani from a small resto near Tirupur train station. The memory of two of us huffing and puffing to catch the train with two packets of it and how we hogged and looked back at each other wanting more and licking the dalcha off the fingers. A "must try|" if you go that side of the state.

The 3 Vs of fish fry: Vavva 240/-, Vral 200/-, Vanjiram 200/- (in that order and if you pronounce it the server way):  A simple masala fry of all the the 3 fishes and they tasted decent just like how we do at home. Glad that they didn't add ajinomoto

Boneless grab 280/-: A small cup of crab meat cooked with spices and curry leaves was fresh and tasty.

Grab omelet 280/-: And so we did grab it and was unanimously rated the best among all the dishes that we had. (Mind voice: Dei oru kilo nandu 140/- at vanagaram/Redhills market)

Rice 75/-: Was a bowl of rice with accompaniments of fish soup, mutton gravy and chicken gray with greens fry and read beans and cluster beans (kothavaranga) fry (no appalam), rasam and muttermilk (moru) are also served

Bill: Was 4480/- for 7 but everyone in the group felt it should have been 2.5 to 3K max for the quality, quantity and taste. They are just riding the Madurai name wave but not for long.. people will fish out after one try

Verdict: Expensive rates for ordinary tasting food. Nothing registers in your mind or stands out to try it another time. You rather go to your usual Pandian hotel where you get the same food at a much cheaper price

Sumar moonji Kumaru - Rate thaaru maaru "oru vaati try pannalam" and you return home singing... Raasathi en usuru ennudhilla, Kaara veetu thinnaiyila karikku manjal araikalaye.... marudhayila vangi thandha valavi odayaliye...