Food-walk – These two words separated by a hyphen has been getting a lot of attention in our city, in recent times. Every other day I get to see so many of my friends on Facebook mark the ‘interested’ option for the Food-Walk events that happens almost every weekend. The two famous food-walks among all in Chennai are:
– Sowcarpet Food Walk
– Mylapore Food Walk.
Unfortunately I have been to neither eventhough I really want to. Someday soon I will.
Just like I follow all hypes in food scene, I really wanted to experience a Food walk. So when we were invited to another place in the same locality for dinner, a fellow foodie and I decided to have a food walk at the beach before heading to the dinner. Residing at other part of the city, Bessy is a place we don’t frequent much and hence we thought it would be a great idea to have a mini food walk as we got the chance (chance pe dance types ;))!
90% of Bessy Food-walk is about the food and only 10% or even lesser is about the walk. Every pocket-friendly kiosk that you would want to try are all at the same place or in either side of the road. Best option is to grab your food, go to the beach, enjoy the food and then come back for more, IF you really want the Walk part in it that is.
The Food of the Walk
We reached the beach as early as 5pm and it was still buzzing with people. We decided to start with Vada pav and end with waffles. And in between we ate whatever we felt like. Rotato was in my list too.
GOLI VADA PAV
Goli Vada Pav was our Spot #1. A small kiosk sandwiched between an ATM and Pabrai’s. Neatly maintained and pretty systematic during the peak hours.
Their menu has a lot of varieties of Vada Pav where basically the vada is tweaked. We ordered for a classic one. One piping hot vada sandwiched between soft buns was given to us, packed neatly. For 25 bucks, it was totally worth it.
Click here to read the detailed review.
PABRAI’s ICE-CREAM
After having the hot and spicy vada pav, we wanted to have something cold and sweet and what could have been better than ice-creams? Yet another small shop right next to Goli vada pav.
After tasting a couple of flavors – Calcutta pan, Nolen gur and Tender coconut, we went with the latter two – one scoop each. Yummilicious ice-creams. I totally licked the cup clean of the Tender coconut one.
Pricing is where it pinches. Two small scoops of ice-cream costed us 192 bucks. Even if it’s all natural flavors, I think pricing could be reduced.
Click here to read the detailed review.
SPRING POTATO
Spring potato or Rotato needs no description I guess. It’s so popular that at the same place, there’re three kiosk for this and all of them were equally crowded. Quite a hit business this is, at minimal investment. We chose to have from the one that’s on the side of Pupil, opposite to Soda wala. This guy has a machine to cut the potatoes, has about five flavors (Cheese Mayo, Thousand Island, Schezwan, Chilli, Chat masala) and charges 50 bucks for all.
We chose the thousand Island flavor. The potato was put in a stick, cut by the machine, spread out with hand and left in the boiling hot oil. After a wait of 15mins odd, our rotato was ready. Sauce was absolutely delicious. Definitely gonna have this everytime I’m at the beach.
FRESH LIME SODA
After having the rotato we got thirsty and lime soda was right there. For the lazy souls like us, this couldn’t get any better cuz no need for walk. We got one Ginger lime soda. It was prepared and given in no time. 15 bucks. It was very refreshing. Best thing was that the ginger wasn’t overpowering. It was mild and nice. Just the right dose we needed then.
CHAATS
Waiting for Westfield to open and having time in hand, we decided to have a plate of panipuri. Again, this chat shop was two steps away. We walked upto them and asked for a plate of pani puri.
While that person started serving I asked for onions thinking he will give me onions in my plate but rather he started filling the puri JUST WITH THE ONIONS and give. After noticing two times, I asked whether that’s the usual filling they give and we all burst into laughter. This guy was new and had no idea. From the next one, he stuffed the aloo but just onions felt better than that. Water was good though. 25 bucks for 6 pieces, not bad!
WESTFIELD
This is one major reason why I wanted this food-walk to happen. Unfortunately our experience wasn’t as great as we expected. We had to wait for 1.5 hrs for them to open; just to clarify – they were late, we weren’t early.
We ordered for a Belgian lolly waffles with classic maple syrup and a bruxelles waffles with chocolate sauce, banana and vanilla ice-cream. Lolly was bang-on whereas the latter one could have been better if they took care of the ice-cream quality they used.
Priced at 80 INR and 120 INR each, they are quite a steal given they maintain the quality and take care of the service part!
Click here to read the detailed review.
And finally we are at the end of our food walk. There were many other options to try like Kati rolls, momos, atho but then we are humans (atleast that’s we consider ourselves) and having to attend a dinner invite after this, we thought we shall stop with this. It was a great experience. More so because of the beach. While waiting for waffles, we sat near the beach and spent sometime.
This time we were just two of us and hence tried very limited things. But, we plan on another food-walk soon, with a few more people, to finish off all the other kiosk in the array. So, stay tuned! 😉
Address: Besant Nagar Beach. (Pupil, Mash, Swensens side)
Hog On! 😀
Chronicles of a confused mind. 