There’s a trick to eating Mathsya’s chilli cheese toast. Unlike other chilli cheese toasts, this one is as fluffy and buttery-cheesy on top as it is within. So if you pop a slice in your mouth upside-down, you get a strong, textured coat of cheese to play with, even before you bite into the real stuff.
But that’s just one way. Over at least seven decades of the restaurant’s existence as a stall, a lodge-and-cafe and finally a restaurant, hundreds of Chennaiites will have figured out other tricks of their own, for different dishes of their liking, across Udupi, North Indian and a mix of Continental and Western street food cuisines.
Back in pre-Independence times, when the outlet in Egmore had its beginnings (there are two more branches in the city now), it was all about authentic Udupi food. This was before the North Karnataka region became synonymous with its now-popular cuisine around the country. “We named it Udupi Home after independence,” says Ram Bhat, who currently runs the restaurant with his cousin.
It was built room by room by Ramana Bhat (Ram’s grandfather) and his sons. Many of their staff, too, have stayed loyal over generations, though some have moved to bigger restaurants.
CHENNAI : TAMILNADU : 19/05/2019 : FOR METROPLUS : Food Review at Mathsya Restaurant, Egmore. Photo: K. Pichumani/ The Hindu
“We made one of the rooms air-conditioned around 1950, before anyone else in town,” Bhat adds proudly, “I’m not sure which room it was, because it was before my time. But I can tell you that it was a Voltas box AC, and guests would take photos with it because ACs were so rare back then.”
Mathsya’s biggest USP, though, has always been its food. “We started the late-night trend during the 1962 war, when there were blackouts in Madras and people were left starving,” says Ram. In those days, idli and filter coffee were the stars of the late-night show: others have made their entrance since, including soft, mildly sweet Mangalore buns and, of course, the chilli cheese toast.” Both are favourites among the city’s party crowd when they go looking for a light bite after the pubs have shut, adds Ram with a laugh.
In the afternoons, however, the crowds are more sedate. The dimly-lit interior, a relief from the harsh city summer outside, is filled with colleagues on their lunch break, grandparents with grandchildren, some families, and a few college students.
Their preferences range from paneer butter masala with tandoori roti , to rasam vada , neer dosa , uppu puli dosa and more kinds of dosas and rice preparations than one can count. A good way to sample them is to try the Udupi platter, which comprises of more than just the popular tiffin items.
CHENNAI : TAMILNADU : 19/05/2019 : FOR METROPLUS : Ram Bhat owner during a Food Review at Mathsya Restaurant, Egmore. Photo: K. Pichumani/ The Hindu
Main course offerings include fragrant bisi bele bath, raw mango rice called chitranam, the tangy pineapple-based curry called menaskai , and the spicy curry gassi . Tea-time snacks include fluffy kadubu and desserts include kasi halwa .
Some items change each day, but the platter basically comprises everything from the region that the restaurant wants its guest to be familiar with. Because the cuisine, says Ram, is immense, from seasonal vegetables — “you can tell the time of year by just looking at your lunch plate in Udupi” — to a number of cool summer drinks.
At Mathsya, Udupi cuisine doesn’t exist in a silo. “A number of Udupi places have gone extinct because they didn’t adapt to the times. Just selling idlis and dosas is not enough: people can make them at home,” says Ram. So Mathsya brought in tandoor in a big way, and continental a few years later. The latter includes a mix of numerous cuisines from out West: so lasagna, roasted Italian rice, pastas and hard shell tacos can be seen, jostling for space between piles of bondas and dabaras of filter coffee.
CHENNAI : TAMILNADU : 19/05/2019 : FOR METROPLUS : Food Review at Mathsya Restaurant, Egmore. Photo: K. Pichumani/ The Hindu
Conversations tinker as softly as the clink of cutlery on plates. There was a time when it would all have been drowned under the splash of a fountain — “we were one of the first in the city to have an indoor fountain, but took it apart to accommodate more tables,” says Ram.
And what is their most popular item? It differs from guest to guest, says Ram. “We don’t have one-off customers, people don’t just step in one day to try things out. Our guests come here to eat, and they walk in knowing exactly what they want.”
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