Dakshin and Murugan idli shop might not exactly be ‘insider gems’ (if anything, Murugan idli shop seems more popular with visitors from Delhi and Mumbai than locals these days), but they’re a realistic representation of the city’s idli-dosai-filter coffee culture for the culinary globetrotter who’s in the city for just a day or so.

We love lists. Let’s face the fact. They’re such a neat, seemingly precise way of compiling and categorising information. Admittedly, they are also very subjective. But then, when you’re flipping though an e-mail forward listing the ‘10 hottest celebrities with stubble’ on a slow weekday, you don’t worry about whether Brad Pitt should have been placed higher than Johnny Depp. I’m being facetious, but out of curiosity I did do a quick Google search for ‘10 hottest…’ and it threw up some peculiar results: The ‘10 hottest cartoon characters’ for instance (Ariel, Betty Boop and Wonder Woman make the list if you must know).

But let’s not get sidetracked. A list has been made. It’s in the form of the just-released book: ‘1001 restaurants you must experience before you die.’ And Chennai’s got a mention; two in fact. Dakshin at Park Sheraton and Murugan idli shop. A strange combination? Well, that’s the beauty of lists. The concept is so fluid they can be designed in any way. In this case, the book attempts to “compare and contrast the evolution of gastronomy across the globe.” In simpler language, the team has chosen to list icons: restaurants that matter, and restaurants with chefs that have shaped the way people in a particular city eat.