Venue: Chanakyapuri
Date: 18 September 2016

Seafood is known for its health benefits world over. Besides being rich in nutrients, coastal cuisine is light on stomach and big on taste. For people like us who live in cities like Delhi -Gurgaon, coastal food has always been a rare delicacy.

Gun Powder’s (in HKV) permanent shutdown left us with hardly any good options for coastal cuisine in Delhi NCR. It was our benchmark for good South Indian coastal food. We like our occasional dinners at Swagath but somehow it’s not a place we like to visit frequently. To satiate our craving for coastal food, we recently went to Sanadige for a late Sunday lunch.

Sanadige is located on the upmarket Malcha Marg in Chanakyapuri, close to Gyarah Murti. The first impression of this restaurant is very impressive. Decor in earthy tones, Lanterns at the reception, a life size fisherwoman statue and waiters clad in South Indian attire were all aesthetically done and soothing on eyes.

They served a Kokum and Coconut milk based drink – Sol Kadhi as a welcome drink. This was a coastal version of our very own chaas, albeit a little tangy and spicy.

We had tawa chicken and prawns in butter garlic sauce as starters with our cocktails – Mandarin ginger mojito and peach bourbon sour. Cocktails were a little too sweet for us and they lacked novelty. But both the starters were delicious – especially the chicken. The marination was subtle but flavorful.

For main course we had a Pomfret in rava coating and Goan fish curry with coconut rice and appam. The main course was delicious and had every thing that we expect from a coastal restaurant. Also we noticed the food was tampered to cater to the taste buds of North Indians. The typical smell of seafood that sometimes overpowers other flavors had been toned down smartly without compromising on the taste. We also tried some Donne Chicken Biryani that was served with salan and raita.

The desserts at Sanadige were absolutely unique for us. Elaneer payasam was kheer made of tender coconut pulp and coconut cream. This was one of the finest desserts we have tried and the taste will linger on for a while. We had Raggi Mani – a flavored Raggi pudding with our filter coffee. This was also yum and the sweetness of the pudding complimented the bitterness of coffee.

The service was good initially but dropped after a while and then picked up again. We had to ask a few times for replenishing the chutneys. Also the serving of dishes was not spaced out properly. Theses little things would have made the experience flawless.

Nevertheless Sanadige is one of the places that we are already recommending to our friends and family for a sumptuous coastal cuisine meal and would love to visit again sometime soon.