A brightly-lit name board with red letters and yellow lights, DesiKlub at Chetpet is here to stay. A two-floor storey building, the cafe-style restaurant also has a bakery and a banquet hall.
A Mumbai-based franchise was started by the trio – Abishek, Shruti and Shrey – who brought in the familiar flavours of Mumbai’s best street foods to Chennai.
As we walk into DesiKlub, one thing that strikes us is the doodles. Using up the space well, one can find caricatures of Ganesha Chathurthi, black-yellow autos, roadside panipuris and dabbawallas.
Each wall brings out a piece of the plush city and how far can Bollywood be? A grey painted background with bold yellow letters of ‘Wah! Bollywood’ with the ‘B’ as a movie reel will tell you how strong the Chennai branch loves its roots.
Apart from that, when you see the phonograph records of Sholay, Anarkali, Mother India, Mughal-e-Azam, you will reminisce the evergreen songs from the 80s and 90s.
With spacious seating, you can choose to dine on the comfy sofa sets or pull up a chair and have your food while gazing out at the traffic below.
Coming to the food, they serve their dishes in mini trolleys, push carts or even on tiny giant wheels. Their menu is not long but is curated differently to cater to the taste of Chennaiites.
First, we had mini Chole Baturas, where the baturas arrived on the back of a cycle and a tiny glass contained the spicy chole. The not-so greasy baturas were soft and the side dish was apt for the rainy evening.
The Kadhai Panneer and Reshmi Paratha deserve special mention as we gobbled them in minutes. Absolutely delicious, the taste lingered on for a while.
Apart from the usuals, the humble idli also finds a place here. Diced and tossed along with capsicum, green chillies and chilli sauce, the dish Chennai Se China Tak made the idlis taste like Gobi Manchurian.
How can Mumbai be itself without pani puris? The 12 tiny puris were broken and stuffed and waiting to be loaded with the ‘pani’, which arrived in a tanker lorry with a tap. All you had to do was just open the tap and fill the puri and stuff it in your mouth and voila! get transported back to the busy streets of Mumbai. Clean and non-messy.
Moving on to desserts with little space left, we waited to savour the queen, which is chocolate. A thali plate filled with small amounts of varied chocolate dishes will make your eyes pop out at their different flavours.
Containing khakra, gulab jamun, chocolate syrup, chocolate fudge cake, shrikhand, dark choc truffles, choco ice cream and white chocolate lollipop, it is a full course chocolate meal.
DesiKlub is located at Harrington Road, Chetpet, right opposite to Madras Christian School. Do not miss taking selfies with the half-done auto and quirky scooter that you find on the premise.