The Farm

The Farm Life on The Udder Side Ours is a 70 acre integrated farm that was started in 1974. Produce from The Farm is also on offer for guests to take home.
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The Farm consists of a dairy (cows & water buffalo), a poultry (free-range chicken & turkey), horses, fields (rice, fodder & vegetables) and plantations (coconuts & eucalyptus). Our aim is to bring the farm and hospitality together, thereby allowing for alternative sources of income as well as allowing for more people to enjoy the space. We currently run a restaurant that can seat 50 people and al

so a Bed & Breakfast for guests who would like to stay over and experience life on our farm. The restaurant on the farm is a thatch roof structure with cool green shade netting around the sides. Built within an existing coconut grove and with brick flooring, this structure gives our guests the feeling of being outdoors while having the comforts of indoor dining. The Farm welcomes many different types of guests – families on a get-away, business people over for team lunches, school children on field trips, overseas travelers looking for a new experience – there’s something for everyone here. The Farm is a perfect setting for a quiet meal, a large corporate event or a party with a difference. The Farm offers multiple interesting locations around the property for events as well as dining and also undertakes outdoor catering. The Bed & Breakfast that currently comprises of 8 homely rooms are a great weekend get-away from the city. Long-term stays are also offered to Business travelers who would like a different experience from that of a regular Hotel or Service Apartment.

Some mornings are spent creating platters of Cheese, condiments, crackers, fruits, toffee & flowers. I like to refer to ...
09/08/2026

Some mornings are spent creating platters of Cheese, condiments, crackers, fruits, toffee & flowers.

I like to refer to these platters as the best gastronomical representation of our Home World.

Isn’t it absolutely amazing that Milk can become so many things?! A dash into eggs to make them softer, a splash into co...
21/07/2026

Isn’t it absolutely amazing that Milk can become so many things?!

A dash into eggs to make them softer, a splash into coffee or tea to make it a treat, as the moisture content of a fortified bread or pastry, as a base for ice creams, cooked to make all those cheese, mithai & fudge & custard & puddings & toffee & ohh the list is endless!

Not a coincidence that I ended with toffee. Because the type we make is made with fresh, whole milk cooked down to become well, toffee.

My favourite reaction in the kitchen - hello, Maillard - is that wonderful dance between protein & sugars & heat that causes textural, aromatic, taste & colour changes. This here is a great example of the Maillard reaction doing its thing.
There is some Caramelisation too of course, as the added sugar melts.

The resulting Toffee for us, with specific heat & time management is a pourable toffee that sets firm over several hours. We then cut them into squares - I really cant say bite-size because they are more.

What’s better than soft, fudgy, slightly chewy toffee, you ask? Toffee with flakes of Sea Salt on top!
Perfect way to cut the sweetness a little.

Ohhhh how to not eat a square?!

We make cheese on a dairy farm. A seemingly simple sentence that carries so much weight. It’s hard to imagine Chennai as...
11/07/2026

We make cheese on a dairy farm.
A seemingly simple sentence that carries so much weight.

It’s hard to imagine Chennai as a city connected to cheese making. And yet, here we are, farming since 1974 with cows & water buffaloes calling this land their home.

We started with mozzarella because we had a pizza oven and wanted to make every single element for the pizzas from scratch. From there, there was no turning back and over a span of 12 years, we now find ourselves making 17 different types of cheese.
All made right here in our cheese room that’s located about 100 metres away from the bovine sheds. The restaurant sits between these 2 locations and that’s where one gets to enjoy these cheeses as plates we imagine & put together.

But mozzarella. Our first cheese & something we make every single day remains our constant reminder to stay rooted to our land.

A ball of mozz made with good milk - because the quality of the milk is everything - has a wonderfully smooth & shiny surface. The cheese has a soft texture, a firm bite & what we like to describe as a squeak when you bite into it.

As a cheese, mozzarella is versatile enough to lend itself to many a dish. Our favourite way though is just to cut into a fresh ball and enjoy it with a bit of olive oil & basil from the garden.

Note: It’s worth a mention that we shape the mozzarella by hand. Forever amazed at what we can learn to do with our hands!

This is a story that’s best told via the photographs, so I’m just going to jump right in. 1 & 5I preemptively pay for ex...
08/07/2026

This is a story that’s best told via the photographs, so I’m just going to jump right in.

1 & 5
I preemptively pay for excess baggage when I travel because I know I will have kilos & kilos of produce to bring back. Fresh chillies, dried herbs, fruits, yeast cakes, spices, utensils, books etc etc. All of this is from unpacking my bags after one of my trips to Sikkim.

2
An ode to the produce & food of Sikkim - Dalle Chhurpi Toast

3, 6, 11 & 13 - Dalle Khursani
Some amount of the fresh chillies I brought back in my bag.
Dalle drying in the sun outside a cafe in Gangtok.
Dalle drying in the garden of our favourite homestay in Darap village.
Fresh Dalle & fresh Chhurpi sold in packets at Bara Bazaar in Gangtok.

4, 7, 9, 10 & 12 - Chhurpi, fresh & dried
A mixture of fresh Chhurpi made in our cheese room with onions & tomatoes.
Fresh Chhurpi made in Darap village.
Home-grown radish salad with Chhurpi for lunch at our homestay.
Hard Chhurpi that is used in soups & also enjoyed like a hard boiled sweet.
The even harder, aged variant - I’m yet to figure what they do with it.

8, 14 & 15 - Cinderella Species
There are so many edible wild plants that are foraged in Sikkim. These are collectively called the Cinderella Species as their full potential is still unknown.
We have chosen to take a leaf out of this book (literally) and include some wild edibles from our garden on to the plate.
- Rangoon Creeper flowers
- Vietnamese Crab Claw leaves

16
A take on the classic Chilli-Cheese-Toast, here we have Dalle-Chhurpi-Toast!

It’s Jamun season! The cultivated Jamuns start showing up in the markets & roadside fruit carts in the beginning of June...
01/07/2026

It’s Jamun season!

The cultivated Jamuns start showing up in the markets & roadside fruit carts in the beginning of June. Large, oblong & full of that cotton-mouth texture.
But we wait just a little bit longer for the wild jamuns that grow in a forested area close to us.

Smaller, more round, more cotton-mouth & more seed to pulp ratio makes them perfect for a syrup because we would get little or nothing if we attempted a jam.

The thought of de-seeding stone fruits like jamun make me want to abandon ship before we even begin, so it’s a good thing we have learnt that the seeds are a powerhouses of pectin and therefore can be retained in the cooking process until a certain point. By this time one can strain out the juices & voilà a syrup can be made!

Now, there’s no escaping the sugar if one wants to make a syrup. Combined with the pectin, the sugar creates a the jamun liquid into one that is sweetened & viscous & ideal to mix with soda & make a summer spritzer. Of the most gorgeous colour!

We made a batch today, so on the menu from tomorrow!

A dessert order that kept expanding had to become a series of photographs. As I’ve said many times in the recent past, w...
30/06/2026

A dessert order that kept expanding had to become a series of photographs.

As I’ve said many times in the recent past, we’re 100% in our Ice Cream era. As a dairy farm, why not! Also, summer.

We make a downright delicious cultured cream called Créme Fraîche. Now while the words are easily confused with Fresh Cream, the two are pointedly different.

Fresh cream is inoculated with a culture & set almost like yogurt. This becomes Créme Fraîche. And we discovered one fine day that créme fraîche makes for an excellent base for ice cream!

And so it began. First, just plan to understand the flavour & that particular tang that balances the sweet. Then Berry season came along. So did Mango season. And the Roselle were fruiting like nobody’s business in the garden.

And so one thing led to another and we have happily found ourselves with many flavours of ice cream made right here in our kitchen, with fresh fruit compote that we make ourselves too.

Photograph 1: Raspberry Swirl ice cream, Roselle swirl ice cream & Mango ice cream with Blueberry swirl.

Just as we were ready to send that out to the table, they asked for another ice cream.

Photograph 2: All the above + Avocado ice cream drizzled with honey & pistachio

And then, they asked for one more.

Photograph 3: The ones mentioned earlier + Mango ice cream with fresh fruit.

Would you believe me if I said the table ordered one more at the last minute?

Photograph 4: Every other ice cream + Caramelised Banana ice cream.

The tray was an ice cream dream!

A Dairy Farmer met a Gardener. The rest, as they say, is history. Some things speak volumes about the land they come fro...
24/06/2026

A Dairy Farmer met a Gardener. The rest, as they say, is history.

Some things speak volumes about the land they come from. We know this about Wine. And we know it about Coffee.
But Cheese? Do we think about terroir when it comes to Cheese? We should!

The bovines we raise on our farm graze in open fields where wild grasses grow, forming a part of their everyday diet. We also grow grasses for their snacks. This ever-changing fodder is a representation of our land; these seasonal grasses & flowers impact the health of the animals as well as the flavour & quality of the milk they produce.

The Cheese we make with this milk - and we make cheese only using milk from our dairy - naturally reflects the quality of the milk and is a concentrated taste of our land, our terroir.

Seems natural then, to pair the cheeses with flowers that also grow on the same land, in our garden. We never have a fixed plan - whatever flowers are in bloom & catch our eye, that’s what we use in these platters.

I love making these platters for our guests. They are my favourite representation of our Home World.

There’s always someone at the table saying “Coffee?”I suppose when you run a Micro-Roastery, you should drink coffee oft...
16/06/2026

There’s always someone at the table saying “Coffee?”
I suppose when you run a Micro-Roastery, you should drink coffee often enough to keep a tab on things.

Started as a Lockdown project when the Restaurant was shut & we really needed something to look forward to, our Micro-Roastery has had very clear parameters from the get-go.

Only Speciality beans. Only Light & Medium roasts to best being out the beauty of these carefully grown, harvested, processed & sourced beans. Roast profiles for various brewing methods. A menu that would offer many ways to enjoy a cup. Packaging what would reflect what we consider important in our coffee.

Pour Overs using Origami filters, Kalita and now a Deep 27 too. Espresso machines & frothers & multiple grinders for the different beans. Traditional brass tumbler & davrah alongside shaken cold drips. Hand crafted mugs for the various brews. A dedicated Coffee Menu with details of each roast profile.

Our Coffee counter is always busy with beans ground fresh for each cup on order & a little naan khatai served with many.

The focus is on clean, bright & bold flavours. Flavours that broaden our understanding of what good coffee is every time we dial in & drink some.

Being a dairy farm, the fresh milk used with our coffee also adds to the story, making it our own special thing. Having a coffee with milk is almost like a treat!

And so, 20 photographs of drinking coffee? Easy peasy! I could probably do 200!

Standing at the kitchen pass is hands down the most involving, intense & exhilarating job one can have in this business....
11/06/2026

Standing at the kitchen pass is hands down the most involving, intense & exhilarating job one can have in this business. Seventeen years of doing this and it still feels nuts!

Orders come in nice & easy or thick & fast, depending on the time of day & day of the week. Tells you what the service floor feels like. Tells you what sort of guests are seated. Yes, food choices are a piercing insight into a guest.

Inside the kitchen, everyone is primed & ready to spring into action. There has to be a certain level of prep maintained to move fast and yet everything needs to be made fresh & on order. It’s a fine balance to maintain.

Now that the order is in the kitchen, the clock is ticking. Well, technically it started ticking the minute the words came out of the guests’ mouth. And so, we must get it to.

Make a plate exactly as we intend it to be. Cooked from scratch to finish, within a very limited time frame and plate it too. With accompaniments, condiments, garnishes and the works. And it needs to be out on said guests table at the right temperature. Written like this, it sounds impossible but that’s exactly what it’s all about.

These are just some of the plates that caught my eye in the midst of the chaos. 20, because that’s what the gram allows.

1. Tank Up Pork Ribs
2. Whipped Tofu Bowl
3. Baked Feta
4. Buttery Mash with Chicken sausages
5. Hiyyayako (Silken Tofu)
6. Aloo Tuk with Cheese, garlic confit & Bacon
7. Pizza 12 with sun-dried tomatoes
8. Ema Datahi
9. Smoked Pork
10. Insalata Caprese
11. Hasselback Potatoes with Pork Sausages
12. Ragi Koozh
13. 1/277 Bloomy Rind Cheese plate
14. Rava Prawns
15. Cannon Ball Cheese Box
16. Beets & Brassica - Botanist Plate
17. Kimchi Fried Rice
18. Nightshade - Botanist Plate
19. Goa Sausage Fry
20. String Cheese Incident

What is one supposed to do in this weather? Make Ice Cream. And eat ice cream! Our friends in Ooty have been growing a v...
06/06/2026

What is one supposed to do in this weather?
Make Ice Cream. And eat ice cream!

Our friends in Ooty have been growing a variety of berries and it’s been incredible to have fresh Raspberries, Blackberries & Blue Berries come our way.

With the weather being what it is - “summer is summering” as they say these days - ice cream has been top of our minds.

We’ve been making a few ice creams over the years. With Créme Anglaise and also with Ricotta cheese - both different and something that works so well on a dairy farm.

Recently, we realised that we could be using our Créme Fraîche to make ice cream. Fresh cream is of course used often, but créme fraîche (cultured cream) would carry a unique taste of our home world into the ice cream. Why not, we thought!

And so began a series of Swirls - make a Compote with the berries, churn the créme fraîche into ice cream & then swirl the compote into it.

We tried a Roselle Swirl with fruit from our garden and it was so good we next tried Black Berry Swirl. And that was so nice, we wanted to try a Raspberry Swirl. And that that was so nice that we decided to go for broke and try our first 2 fruit swirl - Mango & Blue Berry.

Making these ice creams has been the happiest thing we have done in the last few weeks. Apart from the eating said ice cream!

Which one is your favourite?

Address

1/277, Semancheri Village, OMR
Chennai
600119

Telephone

09176050562

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