Tanto Pizzeria — Restaurant in Tamil Nadu

Been a while since I wrote a long review but this place deserves one. I have been wanting to eat their pizzas for a long time now and many friends of mine have recommended this place, albeit a few years ago.

Ambience Its an open to air restaurant with good tree cover. They have a few dogs which are actively running around the dining area and causing harm - just a word of caution if you have pet averse members in your gang. If its pet friendly gang, an added plus to visit. One of the visitors brought in a massive german shepard for a quick pickup while we were there dining. Seating is comfortable and they maintain good hygiene, both at the tables and their washrooms.

Service Easily the highlight of the restaurant. Their staff seem to be mostly people from the neighbouring location and were conversant in multiple languages. They had a smile every time they attended you and turnaround time on orders were also reasonably quick - commendable considering how busy the restaurant was.

Pricing We had a lot of food and desserts and the total bill was around 2200. They had missed a few items in the bill, which we pointed out - last thing I wanted to do was not pay for what was ordered, especially when the staff were the kindest.

Food We had the following Focaccia bread - fresh from the oven. My friend was obsessing over it from his pervious visit. After a piece I was generous to offer him the rest of it - not my kinda order.

Veg four cheese pizza - my vegetarian friends liked it. We eat a lot of pizza and have tried across many places, so not the easily pleased. But is it the best in Pondy? I guess.

Half and half non veg pizza I love places that make half and half pizzas. It makes two people share a pizza with toppings they like. My friend went with bacon (which he seemed to like) and I chose masala chicken pizza. While I found the spice levels of the chicken interesting, found it too dry for a pizza topping. Wasn’t combining too well was my honest view.

Mango ice cream cake I guess we ordered multiple repeats of this dessert. Nice mango sauce and a simple dish which synced well with our preferences for the day.

Tiramisu Found it a little too sweet for a tiramisu. But not too bad overall

Lemonades and drinks Most of them were good meal add-ons.

On a summary note, while the pizza wouldn’t be my primary motivation to revisit, I really enjoyed the vibe of the place and the friendly attitude of the service staff. Would like to go back and possibly order different...

Good place.. But not good in service, need to wait for food a lot.

But good food to enjoy Italian & Mediterranean restaurant serving healthy food options from vegan, vegetarian to sea food.  Pizzas and pastas with choices in organic spelt made only in extra virgin olive oil and choicest of ingredients grown in our kitchen garden. No processed or canned ingredients in any of our dishes. Wood fired pizzas to fresh crunchy raw salads, freshest seafood, brown rice risotto, freshly squeezed fruit  juices are only some of the options on our varied menu.

A day in Tanto starts early with cutting the produce of our organic kitchen garden on  the beach in Srima. When the buckets are full of basil, arugula, tomatoes in season, pumpkins, lemons Daniel goes to the next village to buy fish. He chooses the fishes one by one. It is 9 o’clock when he arrives to the restaurant. Viji is already cutting vegetables coming from Food link (Auroville distributor of local vegetables) and we supplement the supply with Revathi ordering vegetables from the market cultivated in Ooty and Kodaikanal.

Viji and Vijaya the pizza experts light the fires in the two ovens of Tanto (Auroville and ECR). All the vegetables are cooked in the oven itself while Deepak and Danalakshmi prepare lasagne and sauces and Kalvi does ravioli. We do not use maida but organic spelt. In the meantime, Punjolai prepares our famous ice tea and panna cotta.

Sometimes we serve up to 700 guests in one day. On such days you can wait more than half an hour to be served.

There is a lot of love in Tanto. Enjoy and sometimes be patient.

Our host is God.

One home in Tuscany in the fifties. One child watches his mother and his grandmother preparing Sunday lunch. Many ingredients come from the garden or from the local market. No cans to open but everything is prepared choosing the ingredients with care. Traditional Italian cooking is meant to enhance the flavour of each component of a recipe. A little garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, basil, and parsley, salt and pepper. What makes the difference is not how you cook but how you selected the ingredients. At Tanto we are trying to give you an original Italian Sunday...

I’m surprised nobody is saying this, but someone has to.

Firstly, the food is really good. But the attitude and words of the host were not okay at all. I’ll explain below.

There were a lot of people waiting to be seated and since we entered via the parking, I sat down with my husband in one table that was free. He got up to use the washroom. And the host walked to me and asked if it’s 2 people. I said yes, and she said we’ll have to move somewhere else. I didn’t really understand and I said my partner would be back in just a couple of minutes. She started saying “You cannot sit without me saying.” “You have to move” and then had me get up, and seated a party of 4 at this kind of small table, apologizing to them in case it’s too small.

My only qualms are: Why be so rude and downright embarrassing? She didn’t use any polite language, especially since I was confused and I didn’t even understand what she was trying to say.

It wasn’t just to me. She kept telling everyone who was waiting “Don’t stand here in the middle of the restaurant. If you stand here, I will ask you to go out. You have to go out of this restaurant”. EXCUSE ME? 😩😆 Is this what a host says? I totally get that it is an inconvenience for everyone but there is a certain way you can express yourself. We saw so many people from youngsters to elders get really confused and disgruntled by this attitude.

You can tell me it’s a super-busy day with the weekend and end-of-year rush, and that the host needs to control the crowd. Yes, understood. But this is NOT how you go about it. You can easily arrange for a small space of the restaurant to be a waiting area and then tell them to wait there instead of pushing them to one corner and threatening to throw them out.

This is not the first time I’m noticing a foreign host be rude to Indians in Pondy cafés. I’m sure they’re lovely people and they are being firm just to keep he chaos in check, but it was highly unpleasant. We are not little kids to be ordered around and spoken to rudely. I hope the owner/host understands this.

Food was good. But I will not be returning...