Coffee is expertly poured from tumbler to tumbler a metre apart. The fuming foam swells like champagne, rising in aromatic puffs. The smoke disperses – the fabled Madras ‘metre’ coffee is complete. You descend from the coffee high and realise you’re in Chennai (formerly Madras), in one of the seven five-star hotels to have recently launched in the city.

Three years ago, when my brother Samir and I moved here from the UK, the family was dismayed, staggered by our decision: why abandon the impressive spires of Oxford for the mires of Madras? Nobody envisaged that today we’d be sipping champagne on the edge of Park Hyatt Chennai’s emerald-coloured rooftop infinity pool, which seems to fall into Guindy National Park over yonder, or chuckling on the terraces of The Leela Palace, an unapologetically opulent hotel and the city’s first seafront property.

Welcome to present-day Chennai, the capital of the state of Tamil Nadu where not so long ago, luxury experiences and destination restaurants were virtually unheard of — though in the past, I would re-route flights via Chennai just to visit the erratic Sangeetha Vegetarian Restaurant for its celebrated dosas (a sort of fermented pancake made of black lentils).

Today, Milanese-style delis, Monte-Carlo-esque terraces and French pâtisseries have erupted across the city in a frenzied flurry. But they’ve forsaken tradition: no new venue serves Madras coffee as it should be, frothing in little glasses of metal that accentuates the coffee’s sharpness. The dictates of modernity demand banal ceramic or plastic, as big-brand coffee shops burst at the seams with trendy young patrons.

I head to the new Dessert Safari for coffee with the owner, but decide on a more fashionable Belgian hot chocolate at the last minute. Instead of the owner, a scrawny youth by the name of Vineet presents himself and starts talking me through the eccentric menu with its whacky desserts. An hour later I enquire when the owner might materialise. As it turns out, Vineet is the owner. Chennai is spouting young entrepreneurs promoting hipness in hitherto conservative Madras. They are taking influences from all over the world and bringing them back to their businesses in Chennai, giving the city a cosmopolitan, dynamic feel.

Vineet and I emerge from Dessert Safari to find a line of white BMWs curled around the curb like a silk worm. I remark at Chennai’s current penchant for white BMWs and white Audis, all manufactured, like Renault, Ford, Nissan and Hyundai, in Chennai’s new Car City. Vineet, with a yawn as wide as the cavalcade of BMWs, remarks nonchalantly, “One is so bored with BMWs in Chennai. White Ferraris are in. Satyam Cinema’s owner has only one.” “Only one,” my eyebrow shoots up. “The India Cements people have two.” Once upon a time, I’d have thought such a conversation impossible in erudite Chennai, but the city seems to have processed, if not progressed, from books to BMWs.

The latest additions to Chennai’s café scene may neglect the traditional Madras coffee, but the cocktails at the bars certainly knock up a true taste of the modern city. Expect suave cigar lounges that look like they were just transplanted from London’s St. James’s; retro-chic ladies’ bars; sophisticated wine and cheese bars pairing rich Pondicherry-made brie with pineapple and cinnamon compote; and champagne lounges with interiors so exorbitant you’d think you were in New York.

At Hilton Chennai, the rooftop Q Bar serves the ‘Chennai Beach’, a vodka-spiked interpretation of the ice-lollies pedalled on Chennai Beach. The hotel is also home to Vintage Bank, a wine and cheese bar decorated in earthy tones and wood accents, giving it a true wine-cellar feel. Hot spices make for the coolest cocktails at lush Library Blu, back at The Leela Palace, where curry leaf-infused ‘Curry Berry’ tingles like Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5.

At Park Hyatt’s champagne brunch at the iconic The Flying Elephant restaurant, I spot a five-year-old in a Louis Vuitton dress and Gucci pantoufles, and I wonder if this is really Chennai. These days, women slink around the city in strapless dresses as if this were the French Riviera. When I see a nubile teenager propping her ancient grandmother (resolutely silk sari-wrapped) while flaunting her short-shorts, I almost choke on my Peruvian asparagus. Things have certainly changed in once-conservative Chennai.

Making a daring style statement itself, the Park Hyatt flouts tradition with a minimalist style. The interior decor celebrates Chennai’s textile culture, with textile motifs imaginatively woven into decorative elements. I delight in The Dining Room’s spectacular tapestry of paisley in silken reels, which hotel owner Amit Mahtaney says he dramatically rescued from a deluge during construction.

Everything about Amit is dramatic, as illustrated by The Flying Elephant’s decor, which reflects his theatrical background. This phenomenal five-tiered restaurant’s staircase spirals up, each level showcasing a particular kitchen and corresponding decor, and culminates in the sensational Bedroom, a private dining space on which a dozen retro cameras are trained.

The sleek and smug Park Hyatt epitomises Chennai’s evolved taste. Its lean suites frame the new ITC Grand Chola, sprawled like a dragon. Although contemporaneous, the monster next door rather seems an anachronism amid Chennai’s rarefaction.  

The prevalent tastes haven’t spared gastronomy. As emboldened Tamil chefs exhibit epicurean finesse, Chennai’s restaurants have debuted on the world’s top restaurant listings. But this should not come as a surprise; Tamil Nadu once produced the world’s oldest culinary treatise and fastidious attitudes to food in the region make the French seem almost easygoing. Here, cooking is one thing still steeped in tradition — Tamil chefs implement age-old, time-consuming (and therefore pricey) skills acquired in their villages.

That’s not to say that Chennai is without gourmet Euro influences. It’s home to French pâtissiers with Michelin-star restaurant training, most astonishingly at Ecstasy by Mickaël Besse, which is one swish establishment. Here, pastries resemble works of art, evoking the quality found at Paris’s legendary Pierre Hermé. And yet, Ecstasy languishes unappreciated, because unadulterated Valrhona, the Ferrari of chocolate, sharp as a bullet and richer than a sultan, bewilders the uninitiated.

Chennai’s dramatic and frenetic evolution is thanks in part to a booming business sector and the arrival of overseas workers. The new IT City hijacks Bangalore’s cyber monopoly; investors invade and expats swarm into posh pockets where Hindi, French, German, Japanese and Korean soon replace Tamil. These expats must be accommodated, fed and entertained, which means that new establishments attracting an expat clientele are opening up all the time. A recent addition is the new Notting-Hill-meets-Chelsea Lloyd’s Tea House, run by local resident Vandana. In India’s coffee capital, a teahouse is a bold move.

Especially one as delightfully quirky as this: eighties suitcases have been embedded into the walls, fashioned into shelves bearing antiquated oddities, while the old-fashioned menu boasts 63 exotic teas and opens with American writer and poet Jessica Nelson North’s The Tea Party:

I had a little tea party
This afternoon at three.
‘Twas very small —
Three guests in all —
Just I, myself and me. 

Myself ate all the
sandwiches
While I drank up the tea;
‘Twas also I who ate the pie
And passed the cake to me.

Having your cake and eating it too is something that Chennai seems set on, and is certainly achieving. 

THE GOLDEN BOOK

Park Hyatt Chennai
Tel: +91 44 7177 1234
chennai.park.hyatt.com

The Leela Palace Chennai  
Tel: +91 44 3366 1234
www.theleela.com 

ITC Grand Chola 
Tel: +91 44 2220 0000
www.itchotels.in 

Taj Coromandel 
Tel: +91 44 6600 2827
www.tajhotels.com