I once visited Nithya Amirtham. It wasn’t more than two months ago. I feel that though the employees behave well, the restaurant kind of sucks. I’m talking about the taste. I’m just surprised it’s a Chennai restaurant.

The first thing is that the food was really bland. In Chennai, you can’t expect that kind of food. In fact, Chennai is near Andhra Pradesh. It’s not even near Kerala, and this is a relatively spicy city despite its cosmopolitan nature.

I thought it was a Bangalore restaurant. In Bangalore, yes, the food is bland. It’s kind of tailored to the Western palate. They add sugar to sambar, which is a sin in Chennai. So I never expected it to be a Chennai restaurant.

If it’s a Bangalore restaurant, it’s okay; you can expect the food to be bland. Maybe it’s their culture, or maybe they can’t digest spicy food. So, yep, in Bangalore the food is bland.

I ordered Poori Masala and Masala Dosai, and I was dismayed by the masala in it. In Chennai, we expect the masala to be masala—spicy, right? In Bangalore, I don’t think it’s that spicy, but I saw a white poori masala, the same was in masala dosai, that was totally not spicy. Not even to level three on a scale of one to ten. And I really thought this was a Bangalore restaurant.

I should say the chutneys are okay. I think I was offered three different chutneys. One is white, another is green, and another is orange. So they are okay, but the sambar was not great. I think there was sugar in the sambar, and this is the hallmark of Kannada food.

To its credit, the coffee was good. I would expect such coffee in Tamil Nadu. The hygiene in the restaurant was far above the average eateries in Chennai, and hence that was excellent.

The restaurant had self-service, which I’m not so fond of, and the portions were small. The restaurant had a good token system. So you buy it, you wait for your turn, and you get the food.

It’s not only that the food portion was small; even the side dishes, like the for dosas and poori, were very small in portion. And I wouldn’t expect this in a high-quality restaurant.

Finally, the bill. That was reasonable. Maybe they are keeping the bill reasonable by offering very small portions, and eliminating service staff. I have a feeling that this restaurant was built for ulcer patients or people with some kind of stomach disease who can’t handle even moderate spice.