Getting high on the Food at the Farm

Although I enjoy my drink, I have not been able to figure out the addiction, compulsion or association of alcohol with having a good time or good food. But we hit on a couple of theories.

When you go out to eat in a city (like Chennai), what would you do in a restaurant for 3-4 hours? You need to drink to pass your time. There are no interesting places where you could spend a few hours with friends or family without alcohol. What would you do in an enclosed space with paintings and fancy lighting (a typical restaurant)? The other option is go to a restaurant, order food (which probably is very mediocre and template) eat and leave. Total time spent - an hour and a half. How do you spend the rest of the Friday or Saturday night, and where?

Our second theory is based on our own experience while evaluating the competition (we ate everywhere). The food is bad but once you've had a few drinks, it doesn't matter. Everything tastes great when you are drunk. I don't think I could eat the food most places dish out when I am sober.

At The Farm, you have all the space you need and time that you can make. The food is so full of flavours that you need to be in your senses to be able to relish them. There is so much of food that you need time to eat it in phases and then time to digest it while you lay in the lounge. You can spend time doing nothing and still have a fantastic time. We are the only place that invite guests to come in at 5:00 PM for dinner and they end up staying till 11:00 PM. Take a walk, lie down on a comfy bed in the lounge or laze in the pool (yes, we now have a pool but more about that later). No wonder you don't need alcohol to have a good time at The Farm.

Also, the way we serve guests is not like your typical restaurants. We offer a very personalized service and have meaningful conversations with them. By the time the guests leave, we are on a first name basis with most of them. The second time they visit The Farm, it's like visiting a friend. A drunk customer in such a situation is very difficult to deal with. We want you to enjoy the place, the company and the food and most importantly remember the experience. You can do that only if you are sober. You really cannot appreciate our food after a few beers - you will still like it, but your culinary sensors will not be able to distinguish it from the rest.

To our delight our theories have been proven right. Our challenge is to get alcohol craving customer to The Farm once. We've not heard anyone who is revisiting us ask us the status of our bar. We have a had a lot of people question our decision to put in a bar. We now have feedback from some customers that alcohol may spoil the experience. I am talking about active drinkers giving us this feedback.

We are working towards acquiring a bar licence. The government wants us to build a 21 room hotel, which is under construction, but we are not in a hurry. We can and will succeed without alcohol first.

Now when customers ask us if they can bring their own alcohol, we say no - just bring your appetite and, as our customers put it, you'll get drunk on our food.