Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Pale substitute

The idea behind Drive 'N Eats is wonderful, even if it is not entirely new. The concept of sitting in your vehicle and having a meal was well established in Madras of olden days. When the first  such restaurant, the Woodland's Drive-in was opened in 1962, the number of vehicles would have been very few, so they also had a place where 'regular' folks could also sit down and have their fill. 

This one seems to have come at the problem from the other side. Every restaurant needs parking space; so why bother with putting up more infrastructure, when you can serve people at their wheels? But then, when this space on Luz Church Road came up in 2019, I mistook it for a parking space; noticed the sign only after a few more passes by the place. Before I could check it out, we had the pandemic lockdowns. A couple of years later, Chennai Metro's construction in this locality cut off easy access to this, and I haven't ventured to check it out since. 

Even with the attraction of a food-court inside - to rival the Woodies single-style menu - it will take a long while before this can claim the mantle of being Chennai's true drive-in restaurant!


2 comments:

Stefan Jansson said...

I guess I miss out on some of these things as I don't drive a car.

Shantaram said...

Hmmm... and also because you're not in Chennai? :)