The warm Madras spirit is often a wisp of vapour escaping from a glass of hot tea at a local tea-kadai (tea shop). And if you swear by coffee, that brew is on offer too. Tea shops aren’t just about the caffeine or nicotine fix that most people seek them out for. Be it during humid summers or when a cyclone barrels down from the Bay of Bengal, tea shops are also about the accompaniments. In that aspect, Chennai has a special offering. It may not be branded or feature in advertisements, but the good old butter biscuit is unique to Chennai and it also serves as a link when this coastal metropolis was known as Madras. Obviously, this humble cookie is now available across Tamil Nadu, but there is no mistaking its enduring charm, one bite at a time.
Coveted jars
There may be packaged chips, soft drinks, ethnic sweets and savouries like Thenkuzhal, murukku and masalavadais and yet, in a tea shop, those long jars having butter biscuits are much coveted. The usual invocation from a caffeine sipper would start with a ‘master’ or ‘chetta’ (that’s if the one manning the boiling kettle is from Kerala) and then these words would be uttered, “Oru [one] tea, rendu [two] butter biscuit.”
