Anna Nagar is not one of the areas that I frequent in Chennai, and I know I am missing out on a lot of nice places to eat in and around here. Today, I had some work to finish and wouldn’t let go of this opportunity to eat from one of these places!
While looking for a good place to eat something, spotted a bright Yellow and Black board ‘Cafe Arabica’. Immediately remembered that Savoury Sea Shell had started a cafe, premium bakery and Arabian Sweet shop, all in one, called Cafe Arabica. Decided to try this place.
As I entered, the place looked wonderful, nice interiors, mostly themed black, very colorful and lovely display of cakes and sweets all over the counter! There was also bread, and similar stuff on display. I settled down and immediately ordered a Black Coffee and a Barbeque Chicken Burger made saucy, and not dry. I asked the coffee to be brought first.
Black Coffee was wonderful, just how I liked it. Not sure if it was brewed in a machine or manual coffee-maker, but tasted good. Barbeque Chicken Burger came in a small plate, one like the quarter plates :O and wrapped in a butter paper. In spite of a dine-in order, that’s how it was served. I was wondering why they would assume everyone eats their burger with their hands :/ No cutlery on the table, had to request for a knife and fork. After they gave me that, I liked them, not just a namesake cutlery, but good quality ones, felt good to eat with that. It was a bit inconvenient to eat it from that plate though, would have been nicer if they served it in a normal-sized plate. Probably the gourmet burgers and Double burgers are served so, not sure. The Chicken steak was soft and tasty. It was exactly how I had ordered, saucy and not dry. The sauce was very good and I liked the peppery taste in it. The bun was soft too, and overall tasted yummy, absolutely no complaints with the taste. I should mention, it was a bit small in size and wasn’t very filling. I felt I should have asked for the ‘Double’ options.
I was curious to check out Arabian sweets, only Baklava and Basboosa were available from a list of eight sweets, preferred the latter. They said minimum was 100g and that meant four pieces. That wasn’t convenient for a solo diner. Anyway decided to pack two pieces and just eat a couple of them. There were two variants, Pista and Almond. This was typically the Burfi types made with semolina. It was okayish, nothing very special. It said 120 bucks in the menu, but I was charged only 70. Not sure why ! Asked them to pack two and it was given in a nice cute plastic container, convenient to carry in my pocket 🙂
It is not fair to review a place based on one dish, so I don’t even want to call this a review. Paid 357 bucks in all, 200 for the burger, 70 each for coffee and the sweet, the rest was tax. Overall, a very nice place and I would love to come back for an elaborate dining !
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