Birthday cakes are so yesterday. The trend du jour is to put a candle on something more dramatic. After all, it’s got to star on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, right? Enter the birthday doughnuts. And oversized cookies slathered with chocolate. I’ve even spotted a watermelon masquerading as a birthday cake on Pinterest, though admittedly as far as healthy treats go, that’s pushing it too far.
For something more elegant, try a profiterole tower: choux pastry buns filled with cream. You can take your pick: caramel, coffee or chocolate. Or if you’re in the mood for something more exotic, lemon, passion fruit or apple. Appropriately enough, these towers are constructed at newly opened Nicky’s Café and Fine Pastries, an unexpectedly stylish café set between a tangle of old buildings and traffic lights in Egmore.
It is certainly a welcome addition to the busy neighbourhood, with its warm interiors, friendly staff and inventive, but cautiously practical, menu. It features soya buns, a vegetarian riff on Cha siu bao, the popular fluffy Cantonese pork buns. Then there are the daily lunch specials: freshly made pesto pasta, simple pizzas and a range of relatively staid sandwiches.
In the style of a traditional family-run café, founder-chef Nicky Mahboobani is almost always around to guide customers through the menu. As we chat over tall glasses of dark, frothy iced coffee, his sister comes by, holding out a freshly-steamed soya bun. It’s unexpectedly tasty. “That’s the hoisin sauce it’s cooked in,” smiles Nicky, adding that he’s adapted the bun from his mum’s recipe. “Both mum and granma are great cooks,” says Nicky, as his mother waves at us from a neighbouring table. (Evidently, they take ‘family-style café’ quite literally here.) “Growing up, we had a huge variety of food on the dining table: Chicken kiev, Sri Lankan curries, vol-au-vents.”
After a degree in management in London, Nicky took a break from the family business to go to a Swiss culinary school. “We started with a foundation of European cuisine: French, German, Viennese…” He then went on to do a course in European pastry and chocolate, before working for six months at Bachmann in Lucerne, one of Switzerland’s leading confectioners. “When I returned to India, I wanted to create a place that was both a café and patisserie. With good music and a decent cup of coffee. And unusual desserts.”
Which brings us to his profiteroles towers. “We keep experimenting,” he says. So far the hits are the tarts, baked yoghurt and “anything with chocolate.” Realising that customers like having a range of savouries as well, they offer toasties with cheese, mushroom and aubergine. While the theme is European, there’s also plenty of India-influenced food, including a rather formidable-looking desi spaghetti pie.
Right now , since recipes are still being tweaked and altered, and the menu is determinely fluid, some dishes work better than the others. But it does seem to get better with every visit, proof that's there plenty of work being done behind the scenes.
The café is vegetarian, except for eggs, so meat-hunters may be disappointed. That said, the kitchen is on a mission to prove that meatless menus can be varied and interesting. They recently added breads: multi-grain rolls, Swiss butter bread and something Nicky calls ‘tear and share bread.’ Then came bagels and cream cheese, after which they plans to start working on chewy German pretzels.
Not a destination restaurant yet, but certainly a charming addition to the neighbourhood café scene.
Also the only place you can pick up a profiterole tower en route to a party.
Nicky’s is at Fagun Mansion, 74, Ethiraj Salai, Egmore. Call 044 30853552. A meal for two costs approximately Rs 350.
