Six cuisines, a hundred and sixty items on the menu, wholly vegetarian. Only one restaurant in Chennai offers this exclusive combination - Tulsi. Opened only last month, the restaurant, strangely, appears as if it has always stood there, at the junction of College Road, Greams Road and Pantheon Road. The first-time visitor experiences a feeling of deja-vu, as if he has been here before. The same feeling that one gets on visiting a once-favourite restaurant after it has been renovated and redecorated. This may be partly due to the interior, which looks like a cross between Saravana Bhavan and Pizza Corner. It is spotlessly clean and uncluttered, but, instead of the sheen of newness, has a comfortably lived-in look. 

Venkat Chandrasekhar and Gautam Lulla, the proprietors, both believe that Chennaiites are eager to taste and experiment with new cuisines. 'Mexican and Continental food are becoming popular in Chennai,' says Venkat, who has been successfully running his own catering company for the last five years. 'Tulsi offers them these cuisines as well as Indian foods'. All this at affordable prices, in a trendy setting, with music that ranges from the Beatles to the Backstreet Boys, has already made Tulsi a very popular eat-out. Corporate executives, students and middle-class families literally pack the restaurant at meal times on most of the days. On weekends Venkat and Gautam have seen the entire seating capacity of seventy-five filled! 

Ordering food here is an interesting procedure; one has to first select the dishes from the big blue menu display above the counter, pay for them and collect a colour-coded, numbered plastic card from the cashier. One then finds a place to sit - at one of the tables or on the high, cushioned stools lining the walls and windows - and wait for the order to arrive. The waiter collects the food at the counter, looks around the room and identifies the right customer by the card, then serves the food in a specially-designed plastic tray. All the usual North Indian, South Indian and Tandoori favourites are available - dosa, palak paneer, pulao, gulab jamun - as also Mexican, Continental and Chinese dishes. The Mexican dishes use tortillas (chappatis of maize flour and maida). The good dishes are 'Fried Burritos' (vegetables wrapped and fried in tortillas) and 'Enchiladas' (vegetables in a tortilla with cheese topping and delicious Nepolitine sauce). The continental dishes are a little more complex; Lasagna (pasta layered with cottage cheese & babycorn and topped with cheese) and Stroganoff (steamed rice flavoured with garlic and parsley, served with cottage cheese, mushrooms and vegetable sauce) are filling and less spicy. 

Tulsi demonstrates its commitment to serving vegetarian food by using vegetable sauce - instead of beef gravy - in the Stroganoff, and bread - instead of cake, which contains egg - in Trifle Pudding. Tulsi¹s variations are no less tasty than the original preparations. The Mexican and Continental dishes cost from sixty to seventy rupees each. Besides regular North and South Indian meals, Tulsi serves unique make-your-own meals called Combos, in four cuisines; South Indian, North Indian, Continental and Chinese. The South Indian Combo comprises Idli, Vadai, Dosa or Pongal and a beverage (thirty-five rupees). The North Indian; a choice of starter or soup, Indian bread, vegetable dish, dal and beverage (forty rupees). The Continental; a choice of salad or soup, pasta or baked vegetable, bread rolls and beverage (seventy-five rupees). The Chinese; a choice of starter or soup, a choice of rice and noodles, vegetable dish and beverage (fifty rupees). They are very popular. 

The character of this restaurant is pragmatic, in keeping with the times and the restaurant's location. The view through the windows is of a busy street, a crowded bus stop, a junction overflowing with traffic, and, across the river, the commercial high-rises of Egmore. Its character is, therefore, a reflection of life in India today; colourful, competitive, optimistic and down-to-earth. It refreshes and stimulates, but does not pretend to inspire flights of fancy; one will lunch here on a hot summer's day and find one's thoughts turning to the bright prospects on the stock market rather than the possibility of 'cooling showers from the sunny lips of heaven'. For reading material to accompany lunch, one would choose a current affairs periodical or a newspaper, not a book by P. G. Wodehouse. One visits Tulsi for vast variety, efficient service, and simple, unpretentious functionality. 

Arun Masilamoni