Grand Sweets and Snacks partly defines Chennai’s topography and taste. DIVYA KUMAR goes into the kitchen to see what’s cooking
Photos: R. Shivaji Rao
SNACK SHOTS An everyday scene at the Grands Sweets and Snacks in Gandhi Nagar, Adyar Photos: R. Shivaji Rao
It’s 12 noon, and the mid-day rush at Grand Sweets and Snacks has begun. Kids tagging along with their thatas and paatis, office-goers talking into their cell phones while they wait for pakodam to carry back to work, women shopping for podis and thokku for their households, NRIs in shorts and baseball caps, and a couple of vadhiyaars— a microcosm of Chennai humanity streams i
nto the covered compound.
They begin to crowd the counters manned (or rather ‘woman-ed’; almost all the sales people are women) by 35 to 40 uniform-clad people. The founder of the store, G. Natrajan, chose to employ mostly women back in 1982, and that still remains the case. “He believed that women are more responsible, and devoted,” explains Mahesh, the current proprietor.
The customers place their orders, take their tokens, and inevitably pick up one of the complementary dhonnais of mixed rice or akkaravadasal (a mixture of rice and sugar). These dhonnais are a t
radition at Grand Sweets, and quite as popular as the sweets and snacks themselves. The dhonnais are replaced at regular intervals (every five minutes, it seems) by a young woman who scurries back and forth, between the kitchen and the
counter. Meanwhile, the customers settle down in plastic chairs under the ceiling fans, patiently awaiting their orders while tucking into the thayir or thengai saadam.
Inside story
Behind the scenes, 120 cooks are working hard to meet the demand. Huge stoves along one wall hold equally massive iron kadais with oil to fry the murrukus. The stoves are being tended to by, you guessed it, women
in saris who seem dwarfed by the size of the ladles they’re wielding. The large, high-ceilinged kitchen is crackling with activity and cheerful voices, with chattering groups of women rolling cheedais and mixing and neatly packing the famous thokkus and pickles in plastic bottles. On the far side, a group of men in lungis and banians prepare several piles of mavu, and whatever space remains in the airy kitchen seems to be taken up by trays of fried murrukus, stacks of empty dhonnais or shining, pointy cones for seeru.
What keeps this kitchen running like a well-oiled machine are the 50 or so master cooks who have been with the company for more than 20 years, each a specialist in her product. Take for example Rukmini mami a.k.a. Poli
mami. The soft-spoken septuagenarian has been making polis — Mangalore and Thengai polis — at Grand Sweets and Snacks for the last 23 years. “We generally make 400 to 500 polis
a day, sometimes even 2,000 during festival season,” she says.
Today, Poli mami has five people working with her, so her day doesn’t start until 9.30 or 10 a.m. By the time she comes in, those working with her in the poli chain have already started. Generally operations
start by around 6 a.m. That’s when the several litres of milk arrive, are boiled, and khoa is made. Kalidas, assistant cook and general factotum around the kitchen, arrives, cleaning up and starting production of all the items t
hat needs to be sent to the Anna Nagar branch.
But not all of Grand Sweets and Snacks’ production happens at the Gandhi Nagar kitchens. There’s a factory in Perungudi where the perfect thatais and adhirasams are made, and where the flour and
podis are ground and pounded by machines. Those items make their trip to Gandhi Nagar in a nondescript white van several times during the day, and are unloaded under supervisor Subaiah’s watchful eye. And at noon, a massive drum-like t
iffin carrier emerges from the kitchen carrying back lunch for the 25 to 30 workers at the factory.
Distribution network
Meanwhile, packed orders of all sizes stream out of the compound, with Ramakrishnan the security guard helping load them into the waiting vehicles. Other huge packets crowd by the payment counter, waiting to be picked up by the ten or so department stores around the city that sell Grand Sweets products. Not surprisingly, there’s a separate group of women to take the orders a day and another to do the packing.
It is now 1.30 p.m., and that means the Chennai-style chaat counter by the seating area has opened shop. By 2 p.m., fresh, hot kuzhi paniyarams are doing brisk business, joined by adai-avial at
2.30 p.m., and at 4 p.m. the immensely popular sambar vadai makes its appearance in time for the evening rush. The aroma of the food cooking mingles with that of fried savouries and ghee sweets, and the noise levels rise as the crowd s
wells.
Mahesh, who has just returned from his periodic rounds in the kitchens, says that they no longer introduce new items at Grand Sweets, preferring to focus on getting the 250 they already have just right. Certainly it would seem from the 1500 plus orders made everyday that their customers don’t mind. After all, it is Rukmini mami’s unchanging polis and the thengai rice and curd rice served in dhonnais everyday that
they come for. At Grand Sweets and Snacks, it is tradition that beckons.
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