A Little Piece of Chennai Called Saravana Bhavan

There are some places we remember because of a particular occasion. A birthday, a family function, a college reunion, or perhaps one memorable meal. And then there are places that somehow become part of everyday life itself, so deeply woven into our routines that we stop thinking of them as destinations.

For many of us who grew up in Chennai, Saravana Bhavan was one such place.

We called it SB. We went there when we were happy, when we were sad, when we wanted to celebrate, when we wanted to meet friends, when relatives came home, when we simply had nothing to do and were bored, and sometimes just because someone said, “Shall we go to SB?” That was enough. We never really needed a reason.

My own memories of Saravana Bhavan probably go back to when I was in ninth standard. We were living in KK Nagar then, and the Saravana Bhavan there became one of our favourite haunts. I do not remember my first visit, but I remember the food vividly.

My favourite was always parotta with kurma. And then there were their famous 14 Idlis — those tiny idlis soaked in sambar that Saravana Bhavan made so memorable for us. Even today, I can almost taste that kurma and sambar when I think about them. If I ordered a ghee roast, the real hero was again the sambar. There are some flavours that remain in memory not merely because they tasted good, but because they get permanently associated with an entire period of life. Saravana Bhavan's kurma, sambar and those 14 Idlis belong to that category for me.

During our school days, eating out was still something of an occasion, and money mattered. That was probably why the unlimited meals at Saravana Bhavan had such an irresistible appeal to a bunch of growing boys with very healthy appetites and very limited budgets. If my memory serves me right, a meal cost somewhere around thirty or forty rupees then, and the word “unlimited” opened up several creative possibilities in our teenage minds.

Three or four of us would sometimes take turns eating from the same meal. One person would eat for a while, and then someone else would continue. Looking back, I am not particularly proud of our contribution to restaurant economics, and I occasionally wonder whether people like us were responsible for the rule that later appeared saying meals could not be shared.

Their special meals were an event in themselves. They would begin with soup, followed by a variety of vegetables, a chapathi or poori, kurma or potato masala, and then rice with all the usual accompaniments. For a good part of the meal, the vegetables, sambar and other items would keep coming. Just when your body had clearly communicated that no further food was required, dessert would arrive, usually followed by sweet paan.

Once you finished one of those meals, productivity for the rest of the day was more or less over. The only sensible thing left to do was sleep.

One particular dinner remains permanently etched in my memory. My parents were out of town, and my cousin, my brother and I decided to go to Saravana Bhavan for dinner. We were young, very hungry, and blessed with the extraordinary confidence of that age, when you believe that your stomach has no upper limit.

We started ordering and simply did not stop. One dish led to another, then something else on the menu looked tempting, and naturally we ordered that too. There was no concept of portion control, no calorie counting, and certainly no inner voice telling us that perhaps we had eaten enough.

And after all that, there was still one thing left to order: falooda.

The falooda that Saravana Bhavan served in those years deserves a place in my memory all by itself. I have had falooda in many places since then, but somehow nothing has matched what I remember from those days. It was rich, cold, sweet, completely unnecessary after the amount of food we had already eaten, and absolutely irresistible.

We somehow finished dinner and came out. Our house was probably half a kilometre away. Under normal circumstances, that would have been an easy walk. That night, we simply could not do it. We hired an auto to get home.

That probably tells you everything about the meal.

As the years passed, Saravana Bhavan also seemed to grow along with us. The number of branches increased across Chennai, and for us, more branches only meant more opportunities. KK Nagar, Ashok Nagar, T Nagar and several others became familiar names. By the time we started working, SB had become a perfectly respectable place for office treats as well.

Then came the AC halls, which somehow felt very sophisticated at that stage of life. You could now take colleagues out, sit in air-conditioning, and still order the same dosa, meals, parotta and coffee that had been part of your growing-up years. Our lives were changing, but Saravana Bhavan remained reassuringly familiar.

Years later, 14 Idlis would also make an appearance at a rather important moment in my life.

My first outing with my wife, before we got married, was to Saravana Bhavan. And what did I order? Fourteen Idlis.

Apparently, this did not create quite the impression I imagined.

She later went home and asked her mother something along the lines of, “This guy takes me to Saravana Bhavan and eats mini idlis! Am I getting married to some old-fashioned amanji?”

The funny part is that the choice itself had hardly involved any thinking. First outing or otherwise, the instinct was simply: go to SB. And once there, 14 Idlis seemed as natural a choice as anything else.

Years later, of course, she herself became a big fan of SB. So I would like to believe that history eventually proved me right.

Over time, SB stopped being just my favourite place and became the family's default restaurant. That meant something very specific. If I said, “I am going to SB,” nobody needed a formal invitation. My parents might come, my in-laws might join, my wife's aunt's family might get ready, and sometimes people would simply jump into the car after hearing where we were going.

There was no debate about cuisine, no shortlist of restaurants, no discussion about ambience. The announcement itself was enough: “I am going to SB.”

Everybody in the family developed their own favourites too. My dad's favourite combination was tomato soup followed by rava dosa. My elder daughter's favourite was always masala papad, while my younger daughter chose a dish very close to my own heart — 14 Idlis. My father-in-law became a badam milk loyalist after I introduced him to it, and later I introduced falooda to him and to my daughters as well. Slowly, another generation acquired its own relationship with the place.

That, in many ways, was the charm of Saravana Bhavan. Everyone had their dish. You did not always go there wondering what to eat. Often, you went already knowing exactly what you would order and, more importantly, exactly how you hoped it would taste.

One memory from after my marriage still makes me smile. My wife's grandmother had been admitted to a hospital in Ashok Nagar, and as luck would have it, there was a Saravana Bhavan right outside the hospital. Naturally, every visit to the hospital also created an opportunity to step into SB.

What else could I possibly do?

It was during those visits that I introduced my wife and my father-in-law to their badam milk. My father-in-law loved it, and from then on, whenever I took him to Saravana Bhavan, badam milk became almost automatic. Later came falooda, which he and my daughters also came to enjoy.

Food memories often travel through families in exactly this way. You discover something when you are young, years later you introduce it to someone else, and then one day you realise they have developed their own ritual around the same place.

Friends were no different. Today, choosing a place to meet can become a project by itself. One person wants one cuisine, someone else wants another, somebody is looking for a quiet place, and another person is searching for the newest restaurant in town.

Our meetings were much simpler.

The question was rarely “Where shall we go?” It was more likely to be “KK Nagar SB or Ashok Nagar SB?” And most of the time, KK Nagar won.

So many lunches and casual meetups with friends happened there over the years. We were never looking for a fancy venue. We just wanted a place where we could sit, talk, eat and spend time together, and Saravana Bhavan was always the obvious choice.

Even today, when school or college friends meet, SB somehow gets woven into the conversation at least once. Nobody deliberately brings it up. It just appears, almost like saying, “I woke up this morning and had coffee.” That was how routine it had become in our lives. SB did not need a special mention because, in some strange way, it was always already part of the story.

When I returned to Chennai after living outside the city for many years, SB returned to my life yet again. Our weekend haunt became the KK Nagar branch. There is something deeply comforting about returning to a city and finding an old habit waiting for you.

Years may have passed. Jobs may have changed. You may have got married, had children, accumulated responsibilities and lived in different places. And then one weekend, you sit down in a familiar restaurant and order something you have eaten for years. For a few minutes, all those intervening years seem to disappear.

Our attachment to SB was so strong that it travelled with us. When we were abroad and planning a trip to California, we made it a point to eat at Saravana Bhavan there. The same happened in Singapore, and even in Canada. If SB was around, food became one less thing to think about. There was no hesitation, no need to study menus or search for reviews. We just ordered from SB.

There was something deeply comforting about seeing that familiar name in another country. In a place where almost everything around you was different, Saravana Bhavan immediately felt known. You knew the food, you knew the menu, and more importantly, you trusted what would arrive on the table. For a little while, it felt as though a small piece of Chennai had travelled with you.

Eventually, the Saravana Bhavan restaurants that had been such a big part of our Chennai life shut down. The city moved on. New restaurants came up, food delivery became normal, eating out became far more common, and our own lives changed in ways we could never have imagined when we first walked into the KK Nagar branch as schoolboys.

But even today, when I pass some of those old properties, the memories come back.

I do not remember every meal or every conversation, and I certainly do not remember every bill. But I remember the feeling. I remember school friends, family outings, office treats, long lunches, tomato soup and rava dosa, masala papad, badam milk, parotta and kurma, 14 Idlis, that unforgettable sambar, and of course the falooda that once made three young men incapable of walking half a kilometre home.

Even now, when I travel between Chennai and Bangalore by road, I sometimes stop at the Saravana Bhavan near Kanchipuram for breakfast or dinner. Perhaps, without really thinking about it, I am still keeping that connection alive.

Because for many of us who grew up in Chennai, Saravana Bhavan was a feeling, not just a restaurant. It was familiarity, comfort, friendship, family and routine, all rolled into one. It was there while we were growing up. It saw us as schoolboys, friends, young employees, husbands, fathers and families.

We never needed a reason to go.

Saravana Bhavan itself was reason enough.

© 2025-2026 Anand Saranath - All rights reserved