Pelita Nasi Kandar – My first Malaysian food experience.

Our cook took off for three days..We wanted different food from the usual so went to Pelita Nasi Kandar in T-Nagar. I was apprehensive bout going there cos I’m not a parotta person and was worried there will be Coconut in the food ( Ever heard of a fish, meat, banana,jack fruit and coconut hating mallu?…well that’s me.)
Pelita Nasi Kandar is quite accessible to the average Chennai-ite. I loved the decor…colorful yet not overdone….The outer part of the restaurant with cool blue canopies invite you to spend a while, chatting, eating or just lazing away from Pondy Bazaar traffic. Inside, the honey-colored walls beckon you with their warmth. The two floors of the restaurant are connected by a sweeping dark-wood staircase. A lovely yellow and orange pillar with sinuous vines painted across it usher you up the stairs flanked by many tiny niche alcoves with colorful bottles. Nice metal chairs and tables a trifle too light I suppose- one wrong move and the whole thing will slosh curry onto your lap!

 

Now onto the food- Quite an impressive menu card but sadly since I’m the vegetarian mallu I didn’t try any of the non-veg I had a lacy Onion parotta with mixed vegetable curry.It was pretty good for an out right non-veg place. Usually I find myself eating salads in places like Prime Roaster cos outright non-veg places have very poor choice of veg food…But I was not let down in that way here.

My family tried the non veg stuff though(yes they are normal non veggie mallus).They had Chicken Murtabak and Mutton Murtabak (in pic). Then my bro (the genius of whom I’m very proud) orders the Born Parotta just out of curiosity…If we had known it tastes so yummy we’d have eaten that as main course…

The Born parotta is a very ingenious culinary creation that tastes like a light, fluffy, paper- thin parotta stuffed with gulab jamun and sugar syrup…drool..The best part of the lunch!

Finally, due to my stubborn insistence on getting an ‘Ais Kacang’ my bro agreed to share one with me and also sweetly take the photo too). The Ais Kacang is a ball of ice shavings drizzled in fruity sauce in this case it was rose syrup and was topped with vanilla ice-cream …Awesome…

As you manage to fight off brain-freeze you get to the bottom of corn, beans and some fleshy (sorry for the gross description but-slug like things that were identified by bro as COCONUT-oooops!) smooth, rather flavorless things. Whoever thought of putting beans and corn in dessert? I mean like”Where’s my rajma?” “Sir,It’s in your dessert,look carefully under the ice-cream“! A rather novel experience but next time I’ll content myself with the usual dessert-ice cream perhaps. [An interesting double scoop they call the Bunny Hug...]

Overall, good restaurant-some flies but fast service. Yummy food (whatever I tried) especially the Born parotta-lip smacking good but my conventional tastes prefer ice cream to Ais Kacang…