Sanjeevanam is one of the biggest market gimmicks that has been played in the recent times in the restaurant business. The best thing is that people actually fall for the gimmick. Welcome to the world of health food.
Sanjeevanam has couple of branches in Chennai. A friend took me to the one in Indra Nagar (Adyar), which is nothing but the ground floor of a big house turned into a restaurant with a Mallu ambiance thrown in. Why does on usually go to a restaurant? To have good and tasty food and for a change of air. But Sanjeevanam is one place where you should go only if you are totally bored of delicious food, and for once, want to convince yourself that there are worse things in life to eat. Go to this place to stuff cabbage down your gut, all in the name of health food. Visiting this place was a change of fresh air for me for sure. I almost felt like Hrithik Roshan from Dhoom2 who ate green grass and thought Aishwarya Rai would love it.
So far in your life, after having taken your seat in any restaurant, the first thing that the waiter would have asked you, must have been something like: ‘Mineral or regular water, sir?’. At Sanjeevanam, they don’t ask such useless questions. They force you to drink only green colored luke warm water, all in the name of health drink! Hot water in summer? GREEN hot water in summer? Blah. Methi water my ass. I guess they climbed up the roof and filled the glass with raw water from their algae clad Syntax. A two year old kid sitting on the adjacent table got so disturbed by the temperature and color of the water that he spilled it all to his mom’s embarrassment.
The menu was full of funny sounding names. One fourth of every page of the menu card had at least one two-word food-item, Tofu being one of the words (Tofu palak and Tofu fry and Tofu masala and Tofu this and Tofu that). Have you ever heard of a name of a dish that sounds funnier than Tofu? TOFU? And guess what Tofu was supposed to mean all this while? Paneer cooked without salt! I gave up. We gave up! This place, for the first time in my life, made me say this to myself: ‘I am so gonna like my mess food tomorrow’.
Another item idiappam, which at first (going merely by the name) promised to be some kind of idli-uttapam mixture, when served, happened to be a badly cooked sevaiyaan topped with milkmaid. It sucked. The only things that were not bad included the veg clear soup, the rava dosa and the stuffed parantha. We didn’t go for any juice after having finished eating, for the fear of being served some kind of colred electrol powder solution, promising to reduce one’s blood pressure.
Actually, as a parting note, go try out this place. It of course, in no way is going to make you healthier, but it will make you realize that there at least are certain health-foods, which taste fair enough even when they are devoid of regular masala and oil. By the way, if it helps, it is a very economic place where you can easily satisfy yourself in about 150 bucks. All the very best.
Timings: 7.30 AM – 10.30 AM, 12PM – 3 PM, 7.30 PM – 10 PM
How to reach? Refer the map below. The place is marked with A.
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