Hakka hack! All about the Hakka food festival in Chennai 

There are several things in life that one must try. There's skydiving, solo travelling and eating a stomach full of Hakka cuisine. So, when a Hakka food festival named Two Worlds, One Wok came to town, we headed there immediately to try some food that the Hongkongese get to eat every day.

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Curated by Chef Katherine Chung, the menu is quite expansive at the Hakka Fest. So, to keep things simple, we began with the soup. It wasn't any ordinary soup though, for we tried the Red Yeast Rice & Goji Berry Chicken Soup. The strips of chicken in the rather sweet soup (thanks to the berry) made for a nice combination and set our mood right for the entire meal.

From the small plates, we tried the 5 Spice Tofu Katsu, Red Fermented Fried Wings, Xinjiang Spice Tossed Mutton and Typhoon Shelter Prawn. Yep, we did not hold back when it came to trying the dishes and thanks to our liberal intake of food, we were able to get to taste a variety of dishes that were bloody delicious in their own right.

Take the fried wings for example. To look at, the wings are quite like the ones people have gotten used to eating at restaurants. However, the use of red fermented tofu makes the dish an interesting one and it is something that might not be to everyone's liking. But the tossed mutton would surely find a lot of takers in Chennai thanks to them being similar to a dish made here. As for the Typhoon Shelter Prawn, the dish comprised prawns with their shells intact, and turned out to be a very tasty, snack-like dish that one might want to have with a glass of beer.

Then came the time to try the main course. To be very honest, the best of the lot is the salt-baked Baked Chicken which takes two hours to make. It is not a very complex dish, to be fair. All that is needed to prepare the dish is a whole chicken that is marinated in rice wine and sand ginger and cooked in hot salt. But boy did we fall for it when we took a bite. It is easily one of the top 10 dishes one must try before their time on earth comes to a closure.

Having had the best dish of the menu spoiled us really, for we were not floored by any other dish that we tried after that. Not that they were not good; they really were tasty, but our minds were preoccupied thanks to the chicken. Before we knew it, we had tried a couple of other mains, Ma'la French Beans included, and hit the home stretch to end up with the dessert.

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There were two options -- Fried Milk Custard with Ice Cream and Sesame Balls (with red bean paste stuffing) with Ice Cream -- and we tried both. Sadly, they were not the kind of desserts we are used to and we came away unimpressed with the sweet course. If anything, we did want to try the Salt Baked Chicken once again, even if it meant waiting for two hours for the dish to get ready!

INR 1,500++ per person. Lunch and dinner. On till November 26. At Stix, Hyatt Regency.