After the first visit to Marina sometime in October as a part of the tasting group, we went back to Marina when we wanted some good seafood. Marina is probably the only seafood specialty restaurant in Chennai (at least the only one I know of) and it is rather sad that being a costal city, we don't have a few restaurants dedicated to seafood. Is the fact that most of our wonderful fishes and prawns being exported the reason or is it being exported because there are no high end restaurants serving jumbo jumbo prawns? That is like asking whether the chicken came first or the egg - so let us leave at that now! Back to Marina - the aptly named specialty seafood restaurant and yes, there is no chicken or mutton or any other meat served here!
So the two of us were seated in the only available table on a Saturday night as the restaurant was packed. We looked around the various fishes and chose a red snapper to be baked in Chinese style, picked 2 pieces of jumbo prawns and asked for it to be grilled and picked 100g of small prawns and asked for it to be made into a Kerala Style Mango gravy. We also asked for a couple of naans to go with these. The fish was brilliantly flavoured, but the next time I go here, I would pick this style of baking with a less boned fish. There was so much bones that it made the experience a little tiresome, but this would have tasted great with a fillet that they had on display. Both the prawn dishes were amazing and the gravy went perfectly well with the soft naans. We ordered one dessert - a Spanish something - which was brilliant.
If you are not sure about this style of ordering, you could read the original post, but to put it in a nutshell, there is a huge variety of fish and seafood on display with the prices. Things have changed a bit from last time and now there is no cooking charge, it is built into the price on display. You pick the seafood of choice, you decide how much of it you want and tell them how you want it cooked. Simple. They have some starters and rice and naans and dessert on the menu, but the charm of the place is the choice of quantity and preparation. So since we were only the two of us we did not have to be stuck ordering full portions, but we picked just how much we could eat. So we picked the small snapper which was priced around Rs 120 per 100 grams and our fish was some 180 grams. The prawns we chose were jumbo and priced at Rs 240 per 100 grams and the two prawns together were some 190 grams. The small prawns were priced at Rs 100 for 100 g and we picked 100g. We paid Rs 80 for the naans and Rs 140 for the dessert - so our bill was Rs 800 odd!!!!! Just perfect!
Easily a 4/5 for a brilliant seafood experience. They have some vegetarian options for the vegetarians who tag along, but no other meats are available and that is part of the charm!
Marina is located two buildings next to the BP petrol bunk on College Road (opp, SBI Bank, diagonally opposite DPI, next o PINK FITNESS)
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