A Plate Of Souvlaki At Sowcarpet Chennai, home to an urbane, cosmopolitan prosperity, gets a global explosion in taste.

Kebabs and kefte roll off the interactive kitchen at the swish Kryptos on Chennai's fashion avenue, Khader Nawaz Khan Road. On a hot and humid Tuesday afternoon, lunch is in full swing in the large, rectangular 64-cover dining area lined with three kinds of hand-crafted walls - firebrick, metal and wooden. A group of spiffy young women, who have selected this Greek restaurant that opened a few months ago for their afternoon of food and chatter, are poring over a menu of meze, souvlaki, fasolada and gigandes plaki. For most in the crowd, not many dishes ring a bell. But that is precisely why they have chosen to be here - to try, test, acquire and grow their culinary character. And that is precisely what Chennai's foremost and full-fledged Greek restaurant is cashing in on.

Nearby, on the busy Nungambakkam High Road, at Dahlia, a Japanese restaurant huddled in a rundown shopping complex, every day between noon and 2.30 pm, business is brisk. In 1993, a seafood exporter, Naoki Yamauchi, and partner Revathi Nagaswami started Dahlia to cater to the small but growing Japanese population in the city. But now it finds that there are more Chennaiites than Japanese gorging on its home-style traditional dishes of sashimi, sushi, udon, soba, ramen.

Chennai, once known for its conservative palate, has plunged into a culinary culture that now boasts of a cavalcade of cuisines and flavours from across the globe. Its ripple effect is perceptible among foodies, many of whom saying pita, sashimi and wasabi, for instance, in the same breath as idli, sambar and vadai. In today's Chennai, home to a manufacturing and IT hub, and an equally eclectic expatriate population, hummus is haute, kimchi the new cool. {Read on}