Madras, The Raintree Anna Salai
| Address: | The Raintree, 636, Anna Salai, Teynampet, Chennai, Tamil Nadu 600035 |
| Telephone: | 044 30925966 |
About the Restaurant
Located at the lobby level, Madras is the specialty restaurant of Raintree Hotel, serving Southern Indian cuisine for both lunch and dinner sessions. The legend has it that Madras was named after a well-known Portuguese family, the Medeiros or Madra, living further south in San Thome. The restaurant pays is culinary tribute to the four princely states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra & Kerala. The food has been specially crafted in such a manner, that its authenticity is kept untouched and enough options made available in all the major courses for its patrons. The chefs not only executes a-la-carte orders but, also features special thali’s both for lunch and dinner – whose menus keep changing on a daily basis. The thali’s are available in all avatars of vegetarian, meat & seafood. Popular accompaniments like paratha, iddiyapam and appams are served at regular intervals with their popular accompaniments. If that is not enough the restaurant also features 3 live peace artist combinations on flutes, mridangam & gadam.
A brief about the cuisines:
Andhra Pradesh, is known to have the spiciest cuisine among the southern states and is very famous throughout India. Chutneys and pickles are common addition to most of the dishes. Andhra has a good mix of its red hot chillies, tamarind flavor and use of roselle leaves.
Tamil Nadu, brings on the table the Chettinad cuisine, which it is much known for. This originates from the family of Chettiyars, a very successful trading community. Very rich in flavour and uses a wide variety of spices for cooking.
Kerala, the spice garden of India, with its fertile lands, long coastline, numerous rivers and backwater networks create a diverse array of ingredients for a cuisine which can be truly called God’s own feast. For over 2000 years, Kerala has been visited by ocean-goers, from all around the world. Thus, Kerala cuisine is a blend of ingredients dishes and foreign dishes adapted to Kerala tastes.
Karnataka, is famous as the land of coffee, spice and much more that’s nice. Kannada cuisine while broadly similar to that of its neighbours has much that is unique to it too. It is milder than the food of Andhra and almost as dependent on coconut as Kerala food. The cuisine is very diverse with a generous use of bedgi chilli.
Chef D. J. Prabhakaran
Born to succeed in Chennai, Chef D. J. Prabhakaran completed his graduation in Hotel management from I.H.M.C.T.A.N Tharamani Chennai. After graduating, he sought a position as a trainee Chef in order to gain employment in his lifelong passion of cooking.
He underwent two years of rigorous training under the master chefs at the four star deluxe property, Hotel G.R.T Grand Chennai. During this period he gained knowledge and experience in regional South Indian cuisine. From there he moved to Malaysia. It was during this time that his passion for cooking developed and he began to experiment and compile recipes.
In 2008, Chef Prabhakaran joined The Taj Deccan as a part of the pre-opening team for Spice Junxion- A speciality restaurant in South Indian cuisine, and received invaluable classical training, where he gained the personal and practical skills required to run an extremely busy restaurant kitchen and head a large team of chefs. He even had the opportunity to work at the ITC Kakatiya Sheraton at Dakshin, where he had to experiment with different cuisines.
His food is ‘simple’, using fresh quality ingredients, flavors and techniques. He has been cooking for almost 12 years now, and completely loves it.
He got the opportunity in 2012 at The Raintree Annasalai, to lead the culinary team for Madras. He has implemented his skills and presented authentic South Indian cuisine to the best of his ability, on guidance by Chef Mark and Chef Patell
Today Madras, the restaurant is proudly rewarded with The Times City Food award.
