UGHHHHHH I've been stuck with writer's block for a solid 2 weeks now. I've probably rewritten this post 5 or 6 times already, and the intro alone has taken me 2 days to finish.
I went on a road trip with my parents, it's something we used to do as a family before I left for uni so we make it a point to go on at least one road trip a year if possible. On the trip, we visited 2 major places: Chennai and Pondicherry, and I can honestly say I was pleasantly surprised by both (especially by Chennai).
I'm going to highlight 2 specific places I went to eat: In Chennai, Ricky's Cookies and in Pondicherry, Marc's Cafe.
The cookies from Chennai were probably the culinary highlight of the trip. Ricky's cookies is a small shop tucked away on the second floor above a small shop, and it's almost invisible from the main road save for a small sign hanging at the entrance of the stairs. In the shop, there's no seating, and barely enough space for 3 or 4 adults to stand and order. And yet, this humble shop makes some incredibly innovative cookies. Here's a list of the cookies we ordered:
- Green Pod: Green Peas and Hazelnuts
- Ruby White: Rhubarb and White Chocolate
- The Classic: Chocolate Chip Cookie
- Lemon Pockets: Lemon, Cream Cheese and White Chocolate
- Wholesome Dark: Millets and Dark Chocolate
- Pecan and Dark: Pecans and Dark Chocolate
- Golden Eye: Dark Chocolate and Fleur De Sel
So what made these cookies so good? Well, everything really. The three of us are very sensitive to sweet flavours, so cookies that are oversweet really don't work for us, but this was one of those places where even the sweetest cookie could only be described as mildly sweet. The chocolate and cookie base were really more there to highlight the additional flavour. The Green Pod is probably the most innovative and well done cookie I've had in a long time, very mildly sweet and such an unexpected but beautiful combination of flavours. The wholesome dark was also brilliant, the dark chocolate served to highlight the flavour of the millets and despite it being gluten free nothing was lost in the texture. Not one of these cookies was "just okay" and that's saying a lot because this is almost 70% of the entire menu, so I'd be willing to bet that this menu doesn't have any okay cookies. If you're in Chennai, PLEASE GO. And Make sure to order the Green Pod, Ruby White, Wholesome Dark and Pecan Dark for sure. Even if you don't like white chocolate, the ruby white is surprisingly subtle and muted in its flavour.
The other great meal of the trip was at Marc's Cafe. Marc's is in Auroville, something like 20-25 minutes away from white town and the centre of Pondicherry. Now once more, this cafe did one simple thing right: they kept their desserts mildly sweet. In fact, the food was so good that I almost forgot to take pictures entirely! For lunch, I ate a simple tuna sandwich. Nothing superbly special about it, well balanced and good quality fish. The dessert, however, was incredible. It was a pistachio, white chocolate roll (think croissant texturally) and it was PERFECTLY sweet. Here's the difficulty with white chocolate, in order to get the flavour of the chocolate through, it takes a good amount of the chocolate, and that generally brings with it way too much sweetness, but this was beautifully balanced. And on the side, a cloud coffee: Foamed milk, a raw coconut sugar syrup at the bottom and coffee. I HATE coconut but somehow that tasted sublime. Perfect meal right before a road trip to Bangalore.
DEFINITELY TRY BOTH OF THESE PLACES, YOU WILL NOT REGRET IT.
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