The Farm

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Life on The Udder Side Ours is a 70 acre integrated farm that was started in 1974. Produce from The Farm is also on offer for guests to take home.
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The Farm consists of a dairy (cows & water buffalo), a poultry (free-range chicken & turkey), horses, fields (rice, fodder & vegetables) and plantations (coconuts & eucalyptus). Our aim is to bring the farm and hospitality together, thereby allowing for alternative sources of income as well as allowing for more people to enjoy the space. We currently run a restaurant that can seat 50 people and al

so a Bed & Breakfast for guests who would like to stay over and experience life on our farm. The restaurant on the farm is a thatch roof structure with cool green shade netting around the sides. Built within an existing coconut grove and with brick flooring, this structure gives our guests the feeling of being outdoors while having the comforts of indoor dining. The Farm welcomes many different types of guests – families on a get-away, business people over for team lunches, school children on field trips, overseas travelers looking for a new experience – there’s something for everyone here. The Farm is a perfect setting for a quiet meal, a large corporate event or a party with a difference. The Farm offers multiple interesting locations around the property for events as well as dining and also undertakes outdoor catering. The Bed & Breakfast that currently comprises of 8 homely rooms are a great weekend get-away from the city. Long-term stays are also offered to Business travelers who would like a different experience from that of a regular Hotel or Service Apartment.

16/04/2026

A kitchen is a space of so much creativity that is born out of sheer necessity. We have proof of that every single day.

Brine.
How incredible that one needs just 2 ingredients - Water & Salt to make a brine. And this brine is all you need to make sure your meat will stay tender & moist when you cook it.

We brine chicken overnight and the smoke it for a couple of hours, from raw to done. Despite a rather harsh cooking technique like Hot Smoke, the resulting meat - that too chicken which can become like flip flops if overcooked - is soft, juicy & cooked just right.
No way we could achieve that without brining!
Try it if you haven’t. It’s a game changer.

Note: I said just Water & Salt. No one can stop you from adding aromatics & such like to make it even better.

Additional Note: To make sure the birds stay immersed, we always have plates to weigh them down.

Friday evening things in our kitchen.

02/04/2026

Some weekends are meant to pull out all stops.
Planning plotting & prepping for a bunch of fun plates - just for this weekend. Because, why not!

Last photograph in the course lists the Weekend Specials page that’s being printed as I type this.
The rest of the carousel are visuals of this menu. Good thing I photographically document everything!

See you this weekend?

27/03/2026

An article once described our menu as Lawless.
It was one of the best compliments we have received.
We have allowed ourselves the luxury of putting whatever takes our fancy on the menu.

Two factors have deeply influenced our menu decisions:

1. Sustainable access to good, clean ingredients directly from source. Either we grow / produce ourselves or we work with people who do so.

2. Interesting cooking techniques that involve constant learning for us. This has meant not just turning on a gas stove but rather thinking of more intention ways to cook that use existing energy more efficiently.

Being a farm that has grows Eucalyptus for timber & firewood was the determining factor to build a wood-fired oven when we started. It was the necessity of utilising our own resources & the curiosity to do so, rather than any of the cool quotient that wood-fired cooking attracts today.

Our fascination with a roaring fire and the smoke that comes with it continues to influence our menu, as this carousel will show you

1. Tell me that isn’t a gorgeous fire! The oven is equally beautiful.

2. Smoked Chicken. Smoked from raw to cooked over 3 hours.

3. Queso & Peppers Pull-Apart Bread. Enough said.

4. Pizza Number 2 on the menu. All-time favourite. Forever the wood-fired star.

5. Smoked Meat. Using mango chips to create a Hot Smoke.

6 & 7. Goa Sausage / Choritzo. Smoked in the casing. Served with baked Hasselback Potato.

8. Cucurbitaceae Plate. Fermented & Baked. I’ll tell you more in another post.

9. Beets & Brassica Plate. Another one from the Botanist Diet that involves only grilling & open-fire cooking.

10. Solanaceae Plate. Yet another Botanist plate. Roasted.

11. Baked Feta Bowl. Seared in the wood-fired oven.

12. Overnight cooked Coorg Pandi curry using the residual heat of the Pizza oven.

13. Smoked Pork. Self explanatory.

14. Smoked chicken sausages with baked Hasselback Potatoes.

15. Milk Bread baked in wood-fired ovens. No we don’t have a temperature gauge.

16. Smoked Tuna with sourdough Baguette also wood-fire baked.

17. Stacking all that fire-wood we need is a regular scene for us on the farm.

07/03/2026

Food Gifts make for the most thoughtful gifts.
These boxes aren’t just a random collection of things in jars & packets. They are intentionally chosen & put together keeping a certain somebody in mind.

Boxes like this tell you that someone knows you, sees you & wants to make you feel loved.
It’s a simple gesture, but it speaks so loudly.

Forever in love with making these boxes.

06/03/2026

Every once in a way, we get to make a Cheese Table.
I don’t mean Cheese Boxes or Cheese Platters; we make those all the time. I mean a whole Table, covered from end to end with cheese, condiments, more cheese, bread & crackers, even more cheese, fruits, sweet treats & guess what…more cheese.

It took 2 hours to put this table together and then we put in some flowers to bring it all to life, in a sense. I always use flowers from our garden in our cheese boxes and so we took flowers with us to decorate the table. If everything is made by us, the flowers can be ours too, we reckon.

There is only 1 way to describe a table like this -
a Gastronomical representation of our Home World.

04/03/2026

Lunch time & the little Specials Board on the table catches my attention.

Mash.
There is something utterly comforting about Mash, isn’t there? Soft, and very importantly Buttery. It’s very important to generous in life and generosity with butter ranks high up there.

Now, we can all agree that Buttery Mash can just be a thing in itself. But what if we could do more?

I mean, Bangers and Mash exist for a reason.

Sausages.
Sausages we make in-house:
- Classic Chicken with hints of basil & sun-dried tomatoes
- Hot Italian Pork

The above is tried and tested. So how were we making it our own? A sauce. Not the typical but rather something entirely out of the way.

Sauce.
Why not something soy based? With ginger & spring onions & toasted sesame seeds & all the things I love?
Why not, indeed.
Doesn’t sound like something that would pair with Mash?
You’ll be surprised. (Because everything pairs with Mash!)

The Plate.
And so, we have a plate!
Buttery Mash + Choice of Sausages + Sauce.
Delicious hot or cold.

Variations.
Then you think to yourself - what else can I eat with the Mash?
~ Mushrooms mmm - sautéed in butter of course
~ Eggs ooh - marinated in the same sauce

Specials Board
Something we thought of on the spur of the moment and want to highlight right away. These Buttery Mash plates are just that!

03/03/2026

1. Watermelon Daikon in Coconut vinegar
2. Mango Ginger, fresh Turmeric & Chillies in salt & lime
3. Preserved Lime
4. Marinated Quail Eggs
5. Goa Sausage
6. Red Needle Chillies in vinegar
7. Onions & Beet colouring
8. Lime & Sea Salt
9. Beetroot in pickling brine
10. Spring Onion Oil
11. Raspberry Compote
12. Jasmine for syrup
13. Mango fruit Roll-ups
14. Radish & Turmeric in pickling brine
15. Lime & Raisin achaar
16. Dried Bitter Gourd as Vathal
17. Mango Jam
18. Smoked Pork
19. Cured Eggs
20. Sun-dried Tomatoes

All of the above have something in common. Preservation.

It may be in the form of making a pickle or a jam, cooking it down, storing in a brine, smoking or simply sun-drying. The end result is that we are able to save an ingredient & its flavours for much longer than the season.

On a farm it also means minimal wastage and that is everything.

More often than not, preservation requires not much more than Time.

Now imagine a pantry stocked with all the above. It guarantees that no meal will ever be boring; there will always be something fun to pull out and enjoy. Fun!

20/02/2026

The seasons are not as apparent in Chennai as they are in some places. Or so I have thought.
Turns out I was wrong & I just had to stop to notice the signs.

Photograph 2: The majestic African Tulips bloom bold & bright.

Photograph 3: The start of Bougainvillea season, with the breeze blowing the delicate flowers all across the pathways.

Photograph 4: The Frangipani with its quiet very blooms all across the garden in May colours.

Speaking of spring, the Haiku word for Spring is Hiyyayako.
Also the name of the Silken Tofu we serve on our menu.

Photograph 1: The Hiyyayako plate is straightforward. A block of the most silken tofu, with a few fresh ingredients. It is an ode to the complex yet uncomplicated nature of Japanese beauty that permeates everything, including food.

Which brings me to Photograph 5: a Poster
The traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony - Chanoyu - is an artistic expression of preparing & drinking Matcha.

It feels just right that we can have such a ceremony in our garden as it blooms this spring. How amazing that we have a Tea Master from to conduct the ceremony.
Join us next Saturday for Obento (Lunch), Wagashi (Sweets) & the many & drinking of Tea (Matcha).

24/01/2026

Dessert Platters? Don’t mind if I do!

Brownie Bites, Caramel Toffee, Lime Curd, Chocolate Hazelnut Dip, Salted Caramel, Strawberries, Figs, Grapes, Cape Gooseberries & crackers to dunk.
All crammed together in trays to share with friends.
What’s not to love?!

21/01/2026

Milk sweets made on a dairy farm hit different.

Fresh milk that’s converted into khoya by cooking it down until it is almost a dough.
The dough is shaped, fried & soaked in sugar syrup.
I mean, what’s not to like?

As I cut into it, notice the slight resistance the surface offers. My old friend Maillard is in action here; I like to think of the proteins & sugars doing a dance of sorts with one another to the right music that is heat.
This reaction results in a reaction - browning of the khoya and the formation of an outer case inside which it remains ohh so soft & literally melt in your mouth.

As common as they might be to find, it isn’t easy to get a Gulab Jamun right. Temperature is key because you want it to cook evenly, right to the centre. Too little and it will be chewy. Too much and it will fall apart.

After all this, it feels like a shame to add in that classic Gulab flavour and so we don’t. The flavour of the milk is amazing enough.

There’s only one problem with them. I can’t stop at one!

Address

1/277, Semancheri Village, OMR
Chennai
600119

Telephone

09176050562

Website

http://www.thefarmchennai.com/

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