From the people who brought McDosai to Chennai, here comes another eating joint - Ganges. Started in February, the Ganges is a vegetarian restaurant where families could go in for a quiet dining experience. To the tune of "enna thavam seidanai", we settled in for a good evening and Ganges didn't disappoint us. 

The restaurant can seat around 40 people comfortably. The whole place has a truly Indian feel to it - but the decor and layout have been done in a way that it is not obsessively "ethnic" as some of the theme restaurants are. Steel cutlery, steel plates with the traditional banana leaf cut and placed inside, low instrumental music in the background and above all, good food make the Ganges a top class place to have an evening out.

Both lunch and dinner are served as buffet meals and at Rs.120 per head, they offer a great value for money. The restaurant serves north Indian, south Indian and Chinese vegetarian cuisine and samples of all three are in the buffet spread. The soup (choice between cream of tomato and vegetable), accompanied by roti or naan, was served at the table and after such a delicious start, we proceeded to the buffet table for the main dishes.

The buffet was placed in the centre of the room and we just helped ourselves to it. The restaurant opened at 7.30 p.m. and from 8 onwards, people started trickling in. From a newly wed couple to a family complete with thatha, patti and grandkids, the crowd was as rounded as it could ever get. 

Coming back to the food, the spread was pretty sumptuous. From soup to dessert, there were totally 15 dishes in all, apart from three kinds of salads and papads. We started off lightly with soft idlis with two crunchy chutneys and sambhar. We then graduated to the main dishes - fried rice and Chinese noodles, with gobi fry, capsicum gravy and dhal tadka. The bisi bela bath that followed next was one of the best I have ever sampled and went really well with the cabbage poriyal. We polished off the meal with fruit salad with vanilla ice cream, semiya payasam and a top class carrot halwa.

If a quiet dinner with the family includes great food, great ambience and a price tag that doesn't take you to the brink of bankruptcy, then the Ganges is the place for you. 

Address : 3-A Kodambakkam High Road (Near Parson Complex), Chennai- 600 034 

Lavanya