Komala Vilas Singapore

As a hardcore Chennaite, I am used to devouring rice for all three meals a day from breakfast to dinner, be it in the form of Idli, Dosa, Sambar or curd rice. I don't get  a wholesome feel unless the morsel of food spreads throughout the mouth leaving the taste and flavour even long after you have finished your meal. This can only be got with the polymorphs of rice mixed with south Indian specialities like Sambar or Rasam. For the uninitiated, Sambar and Rasam are basically stews that are meant to be mixed and consumed with cooked rice called Sadam in Tamil. Especially with Sambar, there are innumerable versions like Onion Sambar, Drumstick and Radish Sambar, each one transcending the consumer to a different level.  Having said this, I have tried eating in almost all the Indian restaurants in Singapore, right from Annalakshmi to the moderate Mani Iyer mess on Hindoo Road in Little India. With ~15% of the population of Singapore belonging to the tamil diaspora, there is no dearth of South Indian food and restaurants. You can find them all over the Island. But of the lot I have tried here, the Komala Vilas restaurant in Serangoon Road stands out among all.

They have an awesome spread on the menu from Naan and Aloo Palak to the piping hot sambar Idli. The taste is amazing. My favourite here has always been the rice meal here. They have a different menu each day. With a variety of 3 vegetables, along with Sambar, Thuvayal, Vathal Kuzhambu, Rasam and Kheer, etc., Its very much a likeable option for me whenever I visit Komalas.  The best part about this restaurant is the quality of food which remains consistent whether you go at 8 AM in the morning or at 10 PM in the evening just before they close. The reason that the restaurant is in Little India makes it a much more enticing reason to visit this restaurant on all weekends. 

A Five Star Experience

Its very rare for me to visit restaurants in star hotels. I get to visit them at times during our client visits. I had been to one such restaurant in Nungambakkan the other day during a recent customer visit. The seats were already reserved for six of us when we went there at around 7 in the evening. It was a restaurant that specializes and serves south indian delicacies. The interiors there was one of mood elevating. They also precisely knew how to jackup the ambience. On one side of a dais, there was this girl, an amateur, dancing bharatanatyam making small steps to the natuvangam of an old man. It was funny to see her stop and pose, whenever somebody tried to take a photograph of her. On the other side, there was a parrot fortune teller. who was looking very sleepy during that early evening time. The parrot seemed to be drawing everybodys' attention with its chirpiness. We settled for samplers and were served food items that were popular across regions in the southern part of India. We started with Banana Bajji and Vada. We were served Appams, Idiappams and parathas. The side dishes were too many and i dont remember the names of all of them. But i remember tasting different chutneys and also the avial and Poondu (garlic) kuzhambu. I should admit the taste of all these items were divine. I normally dont eat parathas, but the parathas served there were so spongy that they just melted in my mouth. I asked for a glass of grape juice without ice and the waiter astounded me by asking "At what temperature"?. I am not sure if any juice gets boiled anywhere. Finally, the bill arrived and we asked it to be billed to the company. I was curious to know the price of the different food items and just sneaked
into the bill. I could manage to see only the price of poondu kuzhambu and it read Rs 850 against it.