Soy Soi

Area:- Kotturpuram
Cost for two:- ₹1,400
Cuisine:- Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Singaporean

Location & Parking

Soy Soi is located in the posh Gandhi Mandapam Road of Kotturpuram and the restaurant is painted red – making it extremely hard to miss. They’ve also, fortunately, have valet parking and they’re efficient.

Ambience

Soy Soi is located on the first floor and I suppose the ground floor is reserved for another restaurant that’s yet to be opened. The uber looking interior of the restaurant is painted black with bright yellow and red dragonflies adorning the wall. Right at the entrance, a huge block of a halved log is used as a table and it’s so long that it actually goes through a few walls. Cool, isn’t it? The chandeliers which hang as a bunch add more elegance to the decor. Apart from the regular seating which is brightly coloured, there’s also a section with wooden pillars giving it a confined cabin feel that’s got couch seating.

Food

The menu lends a few from each of almost all the important Southeast Asian countries. This has translated into the possibility of offering an extensive array of options to choose from. An item which caught my attention immediately was their Pulled Pork Bao Tacos but unfortunately, it wasn’t available despite it being only around 9ish in the evening.

For starters, I ordered the Scallops and Prawn Suimai. As the name suggests, the open dumplings consisted of scallops and prawn with flying fish roe (fish eggs). It was more of a bite of the ocean and that one bite was enough to establish how fresh the seafood was. Simple, yet heavenly.

I also tried the Sate Udang Jelantah because what’s Asian food without some meat around wooden skewers? This particular one consisted of prawns that have been marinated in a red-chilli sambal. Though I didn’t like the accompanying peanut dip and the fact that some prawns were a tad charred, the marination was enough to put a smile on my face.

One of their wok classics was the Chicken Lemongrass Tamarind. Though the name is straightforward, there’s also another ingredient in the dish which most of us wouldn’t expect – ladies finger. I was also sceptical about it but this brilliantly made dish was absolutely fantastic. The dreaded vegetable didn’t have much of its taste on my buds and not to mention the little sense of satisfaction that I had a healthy dose of veggies 😛

Last but certainly not the least, I ordered a Chili Pan Mee for mains. It’s noodles along with minced beef which is topped with a poached egg and fried anchovies. Is the best time to be a carnivore or what? Perfectly cooked noodles and the beef was just a match made in heaven and it was such a wholesome meal. The anchovies were crispy enough to have been called as karuvadu had it made its way to our shores but the burnt flavour of it didn’t find a fan in me (despite being a fanatic of dry fish).

Service

I rarely mention service under a category on its own as fine dining places are known for their usually impeccable service. But what I experienced here wasn’t so. For starters, they made us wait for 20 minutes. The manager pointed a free table and told us to wait till it got cleaned and when it did get cleaned, he offered it to another group. Post the wait, we were guided to another section of the restaurant where there were a few empty tables. I still don’t know why they made us wait in the first place. This fiasco didn’t stop there. One of the waiters, who was taking our orders disappeared midway. And he didn’t return either. He went on to get busy with other orders. We weren’t even done with ordering by then. I had to call another waiter to confirm if he had passed on our orders to the kitchen. When asked to serve a dish, one waited actually took the bowl to the kitchen and when I enquired another waiter, he told me that she had gone to pack it up for me. And yes, as you would’ve realised, I spoke to almost all the service staff there.

Thankfully one of them was supportive and even helped us select the best from the menu (whose name I regret not getting). Even better was the fact that one of the partners of the restaurant apologized for the mishap on my post on Where Chennai Eats and admitted that they weren’t prepared to serve full house (oh yes, they were almost packed). That’s how you handle a feedback and I’m glad he did.

The above-mentioned items cost us Rs 1756 and though my experience wasn’t completely satisfactory, I wouldn’t mind coming back for another visit – courtesy, the amazing food.

Address:	2/10, Gandhi Mandapam Road, Kotturpuram, Chennai
Telephone:	044 24472557
Timings:	12Noon to 3:30PM, 7PM to 11:30PM