Papparoti comes to Chennai with their famous coffee-caramel buns

Papparoti has over 400 outlets across the world, including one each in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai

In a tiny kitchen inside a chic café, is a freezer filled with meticulously proportioned spheres of dough from Malaysia. They will soon be left to thaw for an hour, then slid into a proofer machine for the dough to rise.

Bun-maker Rashmi Ranjan whips out a tray from the machine and makes concentric circles out of coffee and caramel-flavoured topping on the balls. “This is our signature,” says Satya V Raju, Assistant Store Manager. Ranjan walks out with the tray into the café — the oven is prominently positioned so everyone to see the buns in all their glory — and in they go.

One bite and we realise why they are so popular — Papparoti takes buns to a whole new level. It is crunchy on the outside, and once we bite in, we get to a soft interior that has a mildly-sweet, buttery core. It can be topped with a variety of flavours — strawberry with whipped cream, honey, chocolate, dates, lotus biscuits, caramel, salted caramel, maple, Nutella with hazelnuts/almonds and Nutella with crushed Oreo.

The Nutella-based toppings, unsurprisingly, are the most popular. We try Nutella and hazelnuts — the mild coffee flavour of the bun goes very well with Nutella. Strawberry is the next best topping. Break a chunk and dunk it in the whipped cream that’s part of the topping and you can’t ask for any better. The date syrup is a tad too sweet for the bun, though.

However, the signature bun is best when had plain, unhampered by sauce or toppings that may take away from the experience. Eat it with a cappuccino or ice tea — we tried the strawberry ice tea.

So, where did it all begin? All Nitin Jethwani, the franchiser for India, can tell us is that a baker in Malaysia, called Peter, came up with the original recipe. “The bun’s origin can be traced back to 2003,” he says. It has travelled the world since then — Papparoti has over 400 outlets across the world, including one each in Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Chennai. They plan to open in Pune, Thane, and Bengaluru. On a regular day, they sell around 200 buns. “On weekends, we sell up to 450 a day.”

Papparoti is located at Palladium, Phoenix MarketCity, Velachery.