Karaikudi

Great place for authentic South Indian food; specifically 'Chettinad' cuisine from Chettinad region in South India.

The weekend lunch buffets seem great.  Good selection and authentic variety; I am told that the non-veg dishes are very tasty.  As a vegetarian I get very limited choice - very limited - just one gravy and plain or fried rice, of course I can binge on desserts and appetizers.  It took me a couple of visits over the course of few  months to realize this.  I am not going here any time soon, but would certainly recommend this place to friends who enjoy non-veg food.  Friendly service.

http://www.karaikudiva.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chettinad_cuisine

Minerva review

I would like to give my opinion on two restaurants.  Both share the same name; not sure if they are same management.

Minerva location at Chantilly:
Good food, fair selection, fair service.

Most restaurants close buffet by 3, it really becomes inconvenient for those of us who show up half and hour before closing.  Just into appetizers/ first course the hostess would come by and politely ask us to take more since they would be closing soon!  And most often if we show up late the rice has already become crusty because of sitting there a long, long time.

Minerva Indian Cuisine location at Lee Hwy, Fairfax:
Good food, better selection, fair service.

Food was great, no question about that; it would have been better if they had a website explaining coupon / Restaurant.com policy.  My gift voucher listed some exclusions, but not that it was not valid on a weekend buffet.  Though it is located on Lee Hwy, we had some difficulty navigating to it.  When we tried calling them for directions, we could not get any help - seemed like a fax line. 

 

Sapphire Indian Restaurant

My first and only visit to this beautiful restaurant was very enjoyable.  I would gladly go here often, if not for the distance from home.

A grand selection of food items makes the weekend buffet very sumptuous.  I am not sure I saw any thai entrees in the buffet, but there was an array of north/south Indian; veg/non-veg dishes.  The ambience of the place was good too.  What I liked the most is that the weekend buffet is open till night!  That's fabulous for people like us who 1. habitually go late to places 2.if we are running errands we can just stop by the restaurant whenever we feel like it.

http://www.sapphireindianrestaurant.com/

Jab tak hai jaan - Hindi movie review

SRK, Katrina Kaif and Anushka Sharma

One refreshing thing is SRK acts his age at least for some part of the movie.  It is a welcome break from seeing him as 'just out of college' kid.  With the opening, Samar (SRK) is shown as challenging death, he takes on risky assignments such as bomb defusing in the Indian Army.  According to him, its only his death which will make Katrina (Meera) lose her faith in God (with whom she has a barter system going on).  She has given up seeing him because of one such barter, even though she is deeply in love with him in spite of being engaged to another man.

Meera's understanding of love is somewhat incomplete; she thinks love is something to be avoided.  Her mother's elopement with another man when she was 12 probably had a huge influence on her outlook.  But in comes Samar with his happy go lucky attitude and creates a reunion between mother and daughter.  She sees her mom very happy and content with her partner.  After the reconciliation Meera's outlook on love is entirely the opposite of her previous one - now she thinks people have to run away to find true love.  Her habit of 'praying' to God frequently and having an ongoing agreement of barter system is very annoying. 

However Anushka's character (Akira) is more annoying with her rustic attitude of youngsters and sex.  She has no problem bringing it up even to strangers.

Unless you are a fan of either of these actors, you can skip this movie.

Moondru per, moondru kaathal - Tamil movie review

Three people, three love (stories)....Hmm...Once again what made me want to watch this movie was Cheran.

The story moves slowly at times; certainly a unique perspective of love.  One of the heroes has completely sacrificed love; another has lost his loved one.  Both these instances have affected the third hero so much that he decides to do a little soul-searching and comes to the conclusion that what he felt as 'love' in fact was nothing deep.

This movie raises one question for me: does one have to sacrifice love in order to do social service?  Is not Love a sense of overflowing bliss that it would encompass all in its path.  Its certainly a very reasonable wish for a girl (or a guy, for that matter) to want to spend the rest of her(or his) life with the person she looks up to - as a friend, soul mate, inspiration all in one.

Chennaiyil oru naal - movie review

A wonderful movie! 

I started watching it because it has two of my favourite actors - Prasanna and Cheran but soon was drawn into its nail-biting suspense and thrilling story line.  This movie is in fact star-studded - Radhika, Sarathkumar, Vijayakumar, Prakashraj, Surya.  

The first part of the story moves slower than the latter part.  Post interval literally adrenaline rushes, with the viewer not knowing which way the see-saw would turn; but all ends well except for the young man with so many dreams to make it big in journalism, who is almost fatally knocked down in a road accident.  Its his heart which has to be taken to Vellore Hospital from Chennai.  

The cinematography is amazing.  This movie has all the usual elements like power politics, powerful message, kidnap/carjacking, unity of people, emotional manipulation etc, but all these weave into a unique perspective.

Makes one realise the value of the gifts that we have been endowed with and the greatness of organ donation.