Whenever I am in Chennai I go to Grand Sweets in Adyar. It is a great shop to visit and purchase mouth watering sweets and savouries. They also have some ready made stuff like Pulikachal, Tomato Thokku, etc. You can also treat yourself to a hot Adai or Kuzhi Paniyaaram or Sambar Vadai and offlate even hot jelabi.
I visited the shop just before Deepavali and found lot of renovation work being carried out. One of the staff members informed my wife that the sisters who bequethed the shop are now splitting the business into two.
I went to Grand Sweets today and found the whole place in a chaotic mess. The shop has been divided into two and there is a 9 inch wall in the middle to separate the two divisions. The staff, customers and onlookers are all sweating. It is sad to see that the same set of staff and same set of customers, were transacting with so much ease just a few weeks back, when it was a unified shop and today when the shop is divided into two there is still lot of sweet and lot of sweat. The same old staff are struggling now to cater to the customers, do the billing, delivery and there is too much confusion and chaos in the whole place. Some of the popular items that "Thattai" is not available in both the divisions.
Regular customers like me will have difficulty going to Grand Sweets as we do not know which division to walk into and what to expect??? I was rather disappointed with the shopping experience i got today at Grand Sweets. The sweets are still there in two divisions under the same roof but the Grandier and Comfort of buying the sweet is not there any more.
19th November 2010
We buy the items from Grand Sweets - Mambalam Branch even today, though we do not know to which sister this belongs to! We have to book in advance for festivals and also for Thattai!! Not that much crowd that we experience in Adyar, but the whole Mambalam shops there - the only problem is timing as we do not know as to when the shop will be opened.
ReplyDelete