Inside The Sando Project: Indulgent Japanese-style sandos take over Chennai and Puducherry

‘A little messy and a lot indulgent,’ read the menu, and the dishes did live up to that. We are talking about the latest sando menu, The Sando Project at Ciclo Café, which is a spin on the popular Japanese milk bread sando.

This limited-time sando menu is a messy, indulgent delight

The pillowy soft thick bread, the crispy and juicy fillings and the messy sauces are the highlight for all the sandos here. We delved into the dishes without any hesitation.

The first in our line up for the day was the Bibimbap paneer sando. This was undoubtedly one of the best vegetarian sandos we had and a major credit goes to the Korean spicy sauce. It gave in a genuine heat to the stir-fried paneer and vegetables. Meanwhile, the milk bread absorbed the sauce at the edges perfectly.

The Chilli chicken sando was our next. The Indo-Chinese chilli sauce with tender chicken and crunchy peppers and onions made no mistakes. No surprises, just a well-made sando.

All the breads and the fillings are made in-house, we were told and it showed in every bite. The milk breads here are soft enough to compress slightly when you press it only to spring back.

Our palate-cleansers between the sandos for the evening were the Milo dino and the Lotus biscoff shakes. Milo dino shake, which was our favourite shake from their beverage menu, was thick and deeply chocolatey—almost a meal in itself. The Lotus biscoff shake was slightly more restrained but smooth and caramel-warm.

The Beef fillet with mustard was our next sando, a must-try one! This featured a beef tenderloin strips in a smoky BBQ sauce with caramelised onions and melted cheddar, the mustard somewhere behind all of that doing the essential work of keeping the richness honest. The milk bread wrapped around it with a softness that well suited the filling. We ate it and said very little to each other, which is its own kind of praise.

The Chicken caesar was similar in its composure, grilled chicken and crisp romaine and a properly made Caesar dressing inside toasted milk bread. There were no gimmicks or drama here, just a cheesy, quiet and comforting sando.

We rounded up our evening with a London cake, that came with caramel drizzled across the top and was warm and sweet and felt the right thing to order at the end.

The Sando Project will be available till September end. INR 450 onwards. For lunch and dinner. At all Ciclo Cafe outlets in Chennai and Puducherry.

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