we're in Chennai in the south of India and we're taking you on a massive street
food hunt today we're starting on the beach and our first stop is this really
busy stall right behind me so let's go and get our first snack
Chennai in the
south of India has a unique and wildly delicious food culture this video is
part of our huge India series and we're taking you on a massive street food tour
to hunt down Chennai's best food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing
a Plate we hope you're hungry let's eat
we're at Marina Beach and what better way to start our street food hunt in Chennai
then with a seafood feast so we've come to this famous stall at the beach and
we've ordered up a bit of an epic seafood meal so what you do is you come
to the payment or the cashier's stall, you place your order and you get given
chips according to what you order and then you head on over and grab your
plate of food, let's go
check out my epic seafood feast so I've got a plate loaded with white rice
and he splashed a ton of fish curry gravy on that I've got a serving of prawn
masala and then this beautiful golden fried piece of seer fish which is otherwise
known as king mackerel so the process is; you pay and you get chips corresponding
to what your order, you head over to the rice and curry stall or stand and he
took a really round banana leaf and piled white rice on top of that
and then ladlefuls of that fish curry gravy onto the white rice
and we picked up our masala prawns and then we headed over to
the fried fish stand where they're just frying up so many slices of this king
mackerel in oil, so it's shallow fried, you really have to push your way forward so
I was virtually waving my chip in the guy's face before I got my piece of fish
let's try this rice first if I move the fish aside you can see that the gravy
is packed with ingredients so that's a curry leaf, there's some coriander in
there, there's tomato I think in the gravy as well and then there's silvery
bits in there which is the fish skin, so let's mix the rice around
give that a go
mmmm wow that fish gravy is so tangy it's got a really sour hit and it's really fresh
the rice is really light as well so it's not stodgy there's so much flavor
in there, let's try this fish now so they had slathered this thick masala
paste on top of each slice of fish before it was then put into that hot oil so
let's just grab a piece
get some more rice, give that a go
mmmmm, mmm, mmmm, mmmmm
the fish is quite meaty, but it's also light flaky in texture and that masala
paste which is on top of it is quite spicy that's beautiful let's give these
masala prawns a go, get a bit of that rice as well
mmmmm, mmm, mmmm, mmmmm
so meaty and they've been coated in a really thick masala paste again
and then fried up in the frying pan over at the fish station so much flavor
there's just so much delicious spice and in that coating and the prawns are really meaty in
texture
this is the perfect start to our Chennai street food tour, our feet are in the sand,
we're sitting under this tarpaulin and it we're just surrounded by people
digging into their seafood meals and really loving it
Sheena has been raving about this fish so I am gonna try it with a whole lot of
that rice and gravy, so the fish is really firm
wow, wow the flavors are much more subtle
than I was expecting it's got a really good chilli spice, the mustard seeds that were in
the rice had a really strong pop of flavor, the flesh of the fish was really
really firm, wow oh and it's sweet so it's got a sweetness and I think that's what's giving it the
light taste compared to the look of it and definitely not the physical weight, this
plate weighs a ton, we're sharing one plate here cause the amount of rice that
went onto this plate was unreal and we've got a huge food hunt coming up today so
we were like, no we better share one because that is crazy
let's go again actually I'll try a prawn because look at those little beautiful
little prawns so hopefully quite sweet as well, a bunch of rice
ohhhh, yea
very similar flavor but even sweeter cause of the flesh of the prawn and
the flesh has really got a bit of not crunch but a bit of bite to it still
so even though he's cooking them in those huge pans and really just tossing
them through the, through the sauce, they've held a lot of their firmness, not overcooked at all
wow, that's a really, really
good plate of food and I love sitting here on the beach
feet in the sand like Sheena said, birds fluttering everywhere, a ton of
people, what a way to start
we've now left the beach and we're in the small
backroads of Chennai and we're gonna join another very big crowd at a stand
this time it's for a samosa and that many people can only mean a good thing
it's once again a fight to get to the front of the queue to get these samosas
people are just diving on the stall to order things and this looks so good
it is so golden having come out of some really really fresh looking oil so it's
just beautifully golden and not blackened at all they've crushed the
samosa with their thumb and then dumped a whole lot of green and red chutney so
probably coriander and tamarind chutney on there and look at how crispy that
looks, let's just break off a big bit, dunk it into that chutney oh yeah ohhh
I can see a curry leaf in there
Ohhhh man
Wow Wow I got a whack of tamarind chutney, the casing; super, super dry and super
crispy, super soft to eat though as well just crispy
but then just broke up, got really buttery it's got a potato mixture inside, the curry
leaf bursts with flavor oh that is such a good mouthful I'll try
and break this up so you can get a good look at this potato mixture inside and
how cool is the plate so this is a teak leaf so instead of a little piece of
cardboard or polystyrene they just have this beautiful disposable teak
leaf it's such a good idea oh look at that, all the potato inside
covered with those chutneys oh yeah
mmm mmmm wow that's a really basic mixture inside and
then the flavors of the chutney so you've got that potato mixture and then
the tamarind chutney, the coriander has a little bit of spice and they just slap
up all that liquid because it's been crushed and opened up the casing when
they pour the chutney in it's seeped right through that potato and the flavor is
unreal
now this samosa is extremely good extremely good it's super dry super
flavorsome but the thing that's really like standing out out of this experience
its the food hunting aspect, you come wandering down these little laneways
find these little tiny stalls, crowds of people, the samosa's are all being cooked
right on the street, served on this beautiful teak leaf, it's just an experience
in itself the whole thing wrapped up is a awesome experience
but then the food just lives up to the whole experience, it's unreal it's so good
it's late afternoon so we are going to find ourselves some tiffin items or some
snacks and remember we always put details of where we're eating in the YouTube
description below let's go eat some food
we've come to a really traditional mess in Chennai
and a mess is an eatery that serves lots of local homestyle cooking
and we've ordered up some evening tiffin, tiffin are snacks here in South India we
have got a vada which is a lentil doughnut and it comes with some chutney so
some coconut chutney and a green chutney, I think this might be dal or some sort
of vegetable curry and then we've got a really traditional evening tiffin item
and this is lemon sevai which are rice noodles there's a ton of ingredients
together with it so there's some dal and there's some chilli, check out this
one here, it's like a roasted chilli that looks so good, I want to start with the
vada and you can see in the batter here there's a ton of greens cooked in
with it so I think that might be some chilli
there's what looks to be coriander, lets just break it up oh it's quite stiff, a little
bit stodgy looking in there but packed with a ton of greens
I'm gonna dip it in that coconut chutney and
then just see what it tastes like
mmm it's not as stodgy as it looks so it's got a really crisp outside and then
the inside is relatively light and you can really taste all those greens in
there so lots of herbs definitely coriander, maybe a little bit of mint
it's quite savoury, let's rip up another bit of this vada and swipe it through that
green chutney so the vada is made out of lentil flour and it's just got a ton of
these greens in there
I got a big bit of chilli in that mouthful and it's still really crunchy and then
that green chutney has got a really strong mint flavor
this lemon sevai is made from rice noodles and it's all been chopped up so
it's going to be pretty easy to eat
let's give it a go
mmmmm wow
it's got a really strong lemon flavour, really vibrant, quite
tangy, almost a little bit acidic from that lemon and you've also got like a bit of
mustard seed, there's some chilli, there's the crunch of the lentils in there it's
really really interesting, all right let's go for another mouthful
hmm
so much flavour but it's quite a simple sort of dish so it's not overly heavy not really
complex it's just sort of a nice snack at this time of day
so when you're eating on a banana leaf you always fold the top of the leaf towards
you when you're done to show that you enjoyed the meal and as a sign of
appreciation now that we're done with eating I have got a traditional South
Indian filtered coffee to drink so it always comes like this you've got the coffee in
this metal cup and then it's sitting in this dabarah or this saucer and the idea
is that the coffee is super, super hot so I'm just holding it by the very
rim of that cup, it's burning and I'm just going to pour some of it in the
saucer and then back again just to cool it down and also in a sense pull it so
that it becomes really aerated and frothy
all right, get that air through it so cools it down a bit
so I was trying to pull the coffee to aerate it and create this frothy
effect but it's had the complete opposite it's flat as a pancake but let's hope it still
tastes real good
mmmmmmm
whoa it's super sweet, it's very creamy and it's almost got a really bitter undertone to
it, that is the perfect ending to this tiffin meal
next snack is from a true hole-in-the-wall place so this little blue
window over here is what's serving a battered and deep fried chilli let's go
grab one of these
we've got a plate full of these battered and deep fried chillies so these are called
Mirchi bajji and they're huge like look at it next to my hand
it's ginormous, I'm gonna get this big one from the middle, really really orange
batter and it comes with a huge pile of chutney which looks like probably a
coconut let's just give it a big old dunk, crunch it off, it feels quite soft
that batter but with a bit of crispiness
whoa, whoaaa
wow, I think it's a lentil batter, so it's quite soft actually it's got a very very
fine layer of crispness and that batter is so sort of spongy you can see it's
gone right inside the chili so the chilli has been cut in half and the
batter's almost seeped in there and it's like cake texture all through the middle
let's go again it wasn't very spicy
mmmm yum, so
the chilli has a little bit of crunch, it tastes kind of like a capsicum or pepper
it's not spicy with chilli-ness at all like hot, it's just a beautiful, soft, sweet flavour the
batter is a little bit stodgy because of the way it's quite cake-like but it's
not oily, so it's quite light overall even though it's a little bit stodgy in
the mouth, they're really really good like a really good snack, I want to give
it a really big dunk in that chutney all right
that is gonna be a good mouthful
ohh that is good I think it is a little bit of coconut
but it's not a very strong flavor once again like everything's quite a mild flavor
and the strongest flavor is the actual chilli itself so like I said it tastes kinda
like a pepper or capsicum just beautifully cooked a little bit crunchy
but nice and soft that is a very good street snack and really cool how tiny this little
window is, the window is about this wide that's the whole shop, go up, get your
little plate of food and stand on the street eating it
another massive food... "biscuit?" "huh" "biscuit?" "oh no thank you we're so full" "we had mirchi bajji, thank you!"
another massive... we just got offered biscuits from the locals but we are so
full after that huge, huge massive eating day in Chennai don't forget we always
put the details and directions down below in the YouTube description thank
you so much for watching, remember to hit that subscribe button
we have heaps more videos coming from Chennai and then Hyderabad, give this
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content check out our Patreon page link there, thank you so much for watching we'll see
you next time, poitu varun, poitu varun