Are you a fussy eater and wish to eat only restaurant-style food at home? If you answered yes, then this hilarious video is for you. A sketch video posted by Content Creator Viraj Ghelani shows him complaining at the sight of a plateful of simple homecooked dal, sabzi, roti and rice. He complains to his nani that he is bored of eating all this plain food and wants something “gourmet” and “restaurant-type”. The video jumps to nani prepping a plate like a professional chef and ends up serving the same food in the tiniest portions and plated in a ‘classy’ fashion.

In the hilarious plating, we see a teaspoon of rice, a bite-sized piece of roti in the shape of a heart, a teaspoon of dal spread on the plate like some sauce, 5-6 pieces of beans in a row and a random flower. That’s not the end, nani puts on a jacket and gives a fancy dining experience by torching the top of the tiny heap of rice.
Also Read: From Shovels To Toilet Rolls: Instagrammer’s Hilarious Take On Restaurant Plating Goes Viral

The caption read, “Never messing with Nani again!”

The video went viral on Instagram and has clocked over 12 million views.

Here are some reactions to this fun video:

“Watched 11 times. Nani is a natural actor,” a user wrote. Another said, “Kandivali is ready for Nani’s Michelin Star Restaurant.”
Also Read:Watch: Indian Parents Use Flashlights To Read Menu In A Fancy Restaurant

Appreciating the content, one said, “God! This was epic!!! Bill with GST baaki rai gyo!!!” Another added, “The revenge was epic. Nani took it as a personal attack.”

Picking out the best moments, one wrote, “Hahahha allow me sir and gadhedo was best.”

What do you think of this viral video? Share your views in the comments section.

In July this year ITC Grand Chola, one of Chennai’s premier luxury hotels unveiled Cholatails, a collection of cocktail recipes in a book that makes a strong connection to the city’s heritage. The Cholas were among India’s most formidable dynasties and their influence spread beyond the boundaries of modern India thanks to their maritime exploits. It’s the same for modern food and drink trends that boast a wider reach beyond traditional boundaries. Chennai’s cocktail scene has truly evolved this decade. It’s part of a wider global trend that has seen trends like sustainable cocktails, zero-proof cocktails and a beautiful medley of the classics and new-age drinks reshape bars and nightspots.

The city’s well-heeled, expats and business visitors are reshaping the cocktail landscape in the city as mixologists are discovering their A-game. Many of these mixologists are also tapping into the region’s strong culinary heritage and leaning on local ingredients to create unique beverage experiences. We take you through some of the city’s best spots for cocktails and zero-ABV beverages:

Tranquebar, ITC Grand Chola

This cleverly named bar shares its name with the erstwhile Danish trading post of Tranquebar (Tharangambdi) about 285 km south of Chennai. It’s one of two dedicated bars at the ITC Grand Chola that’s also home to Cheroot, a malt and cigar lounge. The hotel embarked on an ambitious program to create an array of cocktails across seven different dining venues in 2023 and created a bank of 280 beverages in the process. Our favourites are the Cholatails that the hotel likes to call beverages from Tamarind Town that include Puli (Tequila with tamarind and jaggery), the perfect thirst quencher for Chennai and Chukku Kaapi which is a clever spin on filter coffee with Cognac, dry ginger and green cardamom in the mix.

Where: ITC Grand Chola, Mount Road, Guindy.

Also Read:Sip Into Weekend Relaxation Mode With These 5 Creamy And Smooth Cocktail Recipes

The Leather Bark, The Park Chennai

The Leather Bark remains one of the city’s most sophisticated techno lounge bars. The interiors pay homage to the region’s strong connection with leather products. The bar’s new cocktail menu seeks inspiration from the city’s cultural threads and also flavours of seasons. There’s Maami’s Martini which combines the city’s favourite brew (filter coffee) with Irish whiskey and coffee liqueur and Full Bloom, a delicate floral cocktail that captures the bouquet of the city’s famous Koyambedu flower market. The diverse beverage selection is complemented by bar bites that ingeniously blend traditional techniques and flavour with a contemporary touch.

Where: The Park Chennai, Anna Salai

Lady Connemara Bar and Lounge at Taj Connemara

Located at one of South India’s oldest luxury hotels (that dates back to 1854) and an integral part of Colonial Madras, this bar takes its name from Lady Connemara the wife of the then Governor of Madras. One of the bar’s signature cocktails – Madras no: 1, pays tribute to the city’s first licensed bar that first opened as ‘The Cocktail Bar’ suggesting that the city’s love for iced cocktails is not entirely a modern trend. Regulars also recommend 1891 which is crafted in memory of Lady Connemara who spent a year at the hotel.

Where: Taj Connemara, Binny Road.

Pandan Club

India’s first Peranakan cuisine restaurant and bar, Pandan Club has won awards for its cocktail program. Pandan Club embarked on a unique journey – ‘Shortest Route’, a cocktail book that makes the connection between the high-energy vibe of Singapore’s streets and Chennai’s rich culture. These cocktails are not just great for the ‘gram’ but also feature delicious twists. One of our picks is Serangoon Smith which recreates the buzz of Serangoon Road in Singapore with notes like Lemongrass & Gula Melaka.

Where: Bazullah Road, T Nagar

Sundays Chennai

It might be positioned as ‘The Everyday Getaway’ but there’s a distinct Sunday afternoon vibe about one of Chennai’s most popular cocktail bars. That’s one reason why this casual bar located in the heart of one of Chennai’s quintessential residential pockets draws many diners during the day. It’s the perfect getaway on a Thursday or Friday afternoon when you’re already craving for the weekend. Sundays offers a wide array of cocktails and a mix of Indian and international plates.

Where: D Block, Anna Nagar (East)

KooX, Novotel Chennai Chamiers Road

KooX has remained one of Chennai’s hip rooftop Asian dining destinations and high-energy weekend hangouts since it launched back in 2019. The edgy decor and panoramic views complement the KooX experience. KooX recently launched Koi and Khao, a menu that blends the rich flavours of Thai cuisine with the delicate artistry of Japanese dishes. The menu also has room for cocktails like the Nitro Thai Basil Fizz which incorporates ingredients like Thai basil shrub, adding to its reputation as one of the city’s preferred cocktail spots.

Where: Novotel Chennai Chamiers Road

Also Read:5 Tips To Make The Perfect Espresso Martini At Home

The Velveteen Rabbit

The Velveteen Rabbit borrows its name from Margery Williams’ novel of the same name. A popular destination for a relaxed night with good food, friends, drinks and conversations. The bar is spread over multiple levels with refreshed interiors and an all-new menu. It’s Velveteen Rabbit’s cocktails that feature both classics and contemporary, artisanal cocktails that are a big draw with its regulars.

Where: 2nd Main Rd, RA Puram

Noci Adante

One of Chennai’s newest hotspots, Noci Adante is conveniently located in one of the city’s popular retail and entertainment destinations – Express Avenue (EA) Mall. This nightspot is designed to morph from a fine dining space to a party zone as the night progresses. Noci is Japanese for way of life while Adante (in Italian) refers to playing an instrument slowly. The menu is a mish-mash of international plates while the cocktail program is quite bold with a blend of local flavours and international influences.

Where: EA Mall, Royapettah

CNN
 — 

Anthony Bourdain loved haggis. But even the late, great American chef, writer and television host recognized that Scotland’s national dish, with its “sinister sheep parts” wrapped in a shroud of mystery and half-invented history, could be a hard sell.

“Don’t let them tell you otherwise, that’s really one of life’s great pleasures,” Bourdain said on one of his gastro-curious pilgrimages to Glasgow. “There is no more unfairly reviled food on Earth than the haggis.”

A mash-up of diced lung, liver and heart mixed with oatmeal, beef suet, onion and assorted spices, haggis was traditionally made by stuffing these raw ingredients into the stomach of a recently slain sheep and boiling the lot to a state of palatability.

Instagrammable is not the word that immediately comes to mind. In our 21st-century world, where “clean” eating and processed pap overlap, haggis can seem like an “Outlander”-style outlier from another age.

Yet, by some alchemy, once cooked to its required “warm-reekin’ (steaming)” state, it adds up to much more than the sum of its modest parts. It’s offaly charm has kept nose-to-tail eating alive among a younger generation of Scots that has largely turned its back on the tripe, liver and kidneys their predecessors enjoyed (or endured).

Carefully prepared, haggis tastes both oaty and meaty; it is dark and crumbly, a little crispy at the edges but still moist; earthy but also savory and spicy; deep-tasting and profoundly warming, the perfect foil for its traditional garnish of floury mashed potatoes and orange bashed turnip.

“It’s like a cuddle for the stomach,” says Nicola Turner, a 35-year-old office administrator from Helensburgh, a town on western Scotland’s Firth of Clyde.

Spice and texture

For children of the 1960s and ’70s, like crime novelist Ian Rankin, haggis meals were a choice between the classic meat-and-two-veg plate and the battered and deep-fried, chip-shop iteration loved by both his friend Bourdain and his quintessentially Scottish detective character, Inspector John Rebus.

Now myriad other treatments have blossomed.

“I’m pretty sure the first time I dined with AB in Edinburgh we had haggis in filo pastry with a jam-style – maybe blackcurrant – sauce,” Rankin recalled. “He was a big fan of haggis and of chip shops. Rebus will have enjoyed the occasional haggis supper from his local chip shop. He was definitely a fan, as am I.”

“It is all about the spicing and the texture,” says the Scottish food writer, novelist and cook Sue Lawrence, a champion of haggis’ adaptability for use in other dishes. “If you didn’t know what was in it, you wouldn’t think ‘oh that tastes of liver or whatever.’ It is all nicely chopped up and the oatmeal gives it a lovely texture. It could easily be a nice, big mince dish.”

Lawrence uses haggis as an alternative to beef and pork ragù in lasagna and in her pastilla, a version of the North African dish in which a hand-made haggis from the Isle of Mull substitutes for the traditional poultry or seafood filling. The filo pastry savory is flavored with the spice blend ras el hanout, apricots, chile, orange zest and almonds before being sprinkled with cinnamon and icing sugar.

Such cultural crossovers serve as a reminder that haggis could easily be a dish with nothing specifically Scottish about it at all. Records of similar quick and portable preparations of the fast-perishing innards of sheep and other animals date back to ancient Rome and Greece.

Haggis-like combinations of offal and grains are part of the culinary history of several countries. Spain has chireta, Romania drob and Sweden polsa, while chaudin, or ponce, is a rice and meat-stuffed pig stomach that is a staple of Cajun cooking.

In neighboring England, recipes for “hagese,” “hagws of a schepe,” “haggas” or “haggus” pop up in recipe books published between the 15th and 17th centuries, probably preceding written records north of the border.

Etymological evidence points to the term “haggis” having its roots in Old Norse, suggesting an early version of an oat-and-offal sausage might have arrived in Britain and Ireland on a Viking longboat.

But ever since it was first optioned by the poet Robert Burns in the late 1700s, the haggis backstory has been monopolized by Scotland and the Scots, sometimes mischievously.

It is, according to the kind of lore that Burns engendered, the dish a doughty Highlander would carry with him as he drove cattle through the glens to the markets of the central belt or the perfect picnic for a whisky smuggler plying his illicit trade by moonlight.

From such romantic notions it was a short step to turning the haggis into a wee wild beastie, one with longer legs on one side that was thus condemned to run round and round whichever hill it lived on. In 2003, a poll of American tourists in Scotland found that one in three of them believed they might encounter such a confused creature on a Caledonian vacation.

Bourdain, a native New Yorker, may have qualified as haggis’ biggest admirer since Burns, but his compatriots at the US Department of Agriculture remain unconverted to offal-filled paunch. Haggis imports into the United States were prohibited in 1971 as part of a ban on the consumption of all livestock lungs. Authentic versions of old school haggis remain culinary contraband in the US, as hard to lay your hands on as Cuban cigars.

Across the rest of the world, it’s a different story. According to leading producer Simon Howie, haggis is more widely appreciated and consumed now than it has been since Burns improvised his “Address to a Haggis” for the entertainment of well-to-do Edinburgh acquaintances.

Firmly tongue-in-cheek, the poem lauds the “Great chieftain o’ the pudding race,” as exactly the kind of unpretentious, hearty fare required to nourish a nation of braveheart warriors.

In comparison to the enfeebling foreign muck enjoyed by the capital’s claret-quaffing elites of the time – the olio, fricassée or ragoût that would “sicken a sow” – Burns urges his readers to wonder at the magical impact of haggis on his fellow sons of Scotland’s soil.

As the English translation of the original Scots language version puts it:

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed/

The trembling earth resounds his tread/

Clap in his ample fist a blade/

He’ll make it whistle/

And legs and arms and heads will cut/

Off like the heads of thistles

These days synthetic casings have largely replaced stomach but ovine and porcine innards remain at the core of most of the haggis produced in its homeland, said Howie, who estimates that his company Simon Howie Butchers, accounts for around 60% of the roughly two million haggises produced every year.

For Howie, versatility, value for money and convenience explain why this staple of the Scottish larder is thriving. Typically haggis retails in Scotland, which accounts for half of global consumption by volume, for around £6, or $7.70 per kilogram ($3.36/pound). That’s around half the price of less expensive cuts of beef or a third of the price of Scotch lamb while enjoying a fairly similar nutritional and calorific profile.

“You can give your kids a meal that is not full of things you don’t want to feed them – for a few pounds you can feed three strapping lads,” Howie said.

“From a kitchen perspective, it is very simple because when it leaves our factory it is already cooked. So when you or a restaurant owner gets it into the kitchen all you have to do is heat it up to be piping hot. It couldn’t be more basic: a student with no cooking skills or a Michelin-starred chef do exactly the same thing to put it out on the plate.”

Its texture means haggis can also be usefully deployed in fine dining alongside leaner meat like venison or as a stuffing for poultry and game birds. Its spicy intensity means it is also finding uses in canapés and as a crouton-borne garnish for soups.

Buoyant sales are also underpinned by the increasing consumption of haggis in forms inspired by Scotland’s ethnic minorities.

Glasgow’s Sikh community pioneered haggis pakora in the 1990s and samosas, spring rolls and quesadillas have followed in its wake, often using a vegetarian version of the protein in which the offal is replaced by a mix of vegetables, pulses and mushrooms.

Such dishes are more than culinary twists. They are badges of belonging, and an indication that, two centuries after Burns grabbed it for the nation, haggis is as intimately entwined with Scots identity as ever.

Just ask Ross O’Cinneide, a promising 14-year-old fly-half in the junior section of Stirling County rugby club.

“Most of my friends and I like haggis,” he says. “Mum makes it for us sometimes after rugby and it’s got a very nice warming feeling. And it’s nice because it’s purely Scottish.”