Stranded on the Lagoon

Coconut Lagoon is one of those innocuous looking places that is nestled in the corner of a very bustling and busy TTK road. While its Andhra half-sister Amaravathi usually runs away with the accolades ever so often, the quite Coconut Lagoon also seems to have its share of staunch loyalists, and no, not all of them are Malayali.

Since I work full days on Saturday, no prizes for guessing what my mood is like by the end of the day. It was one of those frumpy Saturdays when a friend came to pick me up at work and we headed to Coconut Lagoon for some much-needed comfort food and conversation. Plus, they served beer, so that only made the prospects brighter!

Now, let me tell you first off that I love Kerala cuisine and Ente Keralam is one of my most favourite restaurants in Chennai. Was I expecting Coconut Lagoon to be as good as Ente Keralam? Well, not really but I was expecting it to be somewhere close. Was it? Hmmm, read on to know more…

So we settled down in the somewhat blah and simply done interiors and were presented with their rather exhaustive menu. We asked for the Crab soup, some appams, mutton stew, Syrian beef fry (its Kerala cuisine, so beef has to be a staple!) and some mushroom pepper fry. Needless to say, the beer was a welcome addition to what we asked for and probably the best thing about the meal.

While the crab soup was interesting, a hearty broth with a large piece of crab in each bowl, the mushroom pepper fry was extremely lackluster. Sure it was spicy, but that’s all it was…lots and lots of pepper and chilli powder. The Syrian beef fry however, more than made up for the mushroom. Fried to perfection, I would definitely go back for this one dish. Sufficiently stuffed with the starters, we decided to dive in to the appams and mutton stew. The appams here are slightly different in the sense that they are served flat. They don’t take the glorious form of the kadhai. Much like what we love at Ente Keralam. Nevertheless, they were tasty. The mutton stew though was a thorough disappointment. It lacked absolutely any flavour and just tasted like a bowl of cream with mutton pieces thrown in.

Not ones to be deterred, we decided to have the pal ada pradhaman for dessert, but sadly, even that was absolutely flavourless. I’m not saying Coconut Lagoon serves bad no. Hell no! It has it’s proud moments…what I do expect is slightly more inspired and thought through food.

NOTE: Do check you bill thoroughly because we were charged over 150 rs extra and even after asking for a revised bill, they charged us an additional fee. We had to recalculate the bill for them! Maybe math classes are in order?