It’s seafood and seafood at Sagara, a restaurant on the Bypass road, near Karikkakom Temple.
A branch of the popular seafood joint, this newly opened eatery is already making waves judging by the line of cars that is parked in front of the restaurant.
The menu at this new joint is rather extensive. And although the emphasis is on seafood, there are vegetarian and other non-vegetarian dishes available here too. Open from 7 a.m. onwards, Sagara has a host of dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. If idiyappam/appam with vegetable curry, puttu and meen curry, dosa and mathi fry, and puttu, payaru and pappadam are some of the dishes served for breakfast, fish curry meals, kakka erachi fry, meen motta thoran and chippy masala are on the lunch menu and thattil kutti dosa, kutty idli meen curry, ari oratti and mutton masala are some of the dishes for dinner.
We are there for lunch. Although we plan to dine on prawns and more prawns, our waiter disappoints us by saying that they have yet to receive their supply of prawns for the day. After going through the menu several times, we finally decide on fish curry meal, chicken dosa porotta, kanava fry and gobi manchurian.
The dishes come piping hot. The fish curry meal has rice served with vegetable dishes, fish curry and pickle. Sambar, parippu, buttermilk and rasam are served liberally with the meal.
The chicken dosa needs a bit more seasoning for the filling, which contains minced chicken, tomatoes, onions and green chillies. The porattas are flaky and go well with the gobi manchurian.
The kanava fry is a hit at our table and we soon order a second. Our second plate, however, tastes different, the flavours from the marinade being more pronounced. Our waiter tells us while the first dish was fried in oil, the second was tava fried. While my friend prefers the deep fried kanava, I prefer the latter as I felt it had a smoky flavour to it. Towards the end of our meal, our waiter informs us their prawns-based dishes are ready. Although we are rather full, gluttony creeps in and soon a large platter of fried prawns arrives. Seasoned to perfection and fried just right that the prawns retain their juiciness, we golf them down. The dishes, be it the kanava fry or the prawn fry, are rather spicy and are not for the faint hearted.
To top off our meal, we order pista-flavoured and butterscotch-flavoured kulfis. Satiated, we leave with broad smiles. The restaurant is spacious and tables are far apart which give diners a sense of privacy. There’s a separate section for those who want to dine in ‘air conditioned comforts’ too.
