I have a confession to make. The only time I have tried a Keventers shake was when I was running to catch a flight in Delhi and my friend managed to convince me that this was as good as any meal-on-the-go option that Connaught Place had to offer. Thing is, trying to down a half litre of thick, extra sweet milkshake is best not done in the back of a cab, while milling through Delhi’s delightful traffic. So trying Keventers again wasn’t on any bucket list of mine.
And then they decided to go and open smack bang in the middle of Khader Nawaz Khan Road. I’m not even kidding, it is literally and geometrically right in the middle — in the complex that houses Mamagoto, a stone’s throw away from the Thick Shake Factory.
Seeing as how they have quietly launched their first store in Chennai, I was a wee bit concerned that we wouldn’t be able to spot it. But in hindsight, we needn’t have bothered — the crowd of teeny-boppers with college identity cards around their necks emerging from a crowd with glass bottles in their hands, an expression that suggested they were about to break out into the chorus of Queen’s We Are The Champions, was a dead giveaway. “This is nothing,” says the man who holds the franchise rights to South India for Keventers, Abdul Kadhar. “Over the weekend, the line was so long it reached the road,” he adds with a grin.
Like every other Keventers outlet, this one is a kiosk too. Three milkshake makers scurry around busily with the practised ease of military cooks at chow time, whipping up shake after creamy shake. “How we get the consistency right across every outlet is by weighing every ingredient perfectly and sticking to the recipe. That’s why it takes only two to three minutes for each shake to be made,” explains the man who brought the brand to Bengaluru, and is eyeing his home stead of Kerala next. The whole kiosk is stocked with their trademark milk bottles, modelled on the bottles of yore designed by the Swede, who gave them their name when he started the dairy in 1925. And there’s loads of signage that assures you that you can take the bottle home with you. I consider this essential, because at `200 (plus GST) a pop, the bottle is a part of the value proposition.
The menu is simplistic, a trait that I have personally come to admire, as it simplifies the ordering process and has about 15 flavours. I’d gander that none of them will seem alien to you. From staples such as strawberry and vanilla, there are offbeat ones like a vivacious bubblegum and a mint oreo mix. I ask them to surprise me. Their answer? Caramello and the Mint Oreo Crumble shake that I had been eyeing with interest.
Though the two-to-three-minutes promise sounds good, the crowd is unrepentant. And at two to three minutes a shake, you must be prepared for a bit of a wait for your shake, and pray that it’s one of those days when the sun is not at its burning best.
I got lucky. Not only was it sufficiently gloomy, the vehicle tow trucks that trawl KNK Road preying on cars parked in No Parking zones were nowhere in site. Which brings me to the only downside of stopping off at Keventers — they don’t have parking space, which means if you’ve driven there, good luck to you finding parking.
And then the shakes arrive. The Mint Oreo Crumble Shake is a delight — possibly because the mint manages to tone the sweet quotient down and the Oreos have been blended well. No floating bits of cream here.The Caramel shake is more standard, but the thickness, probably because of the large amount of ice cream and sauce used, isn’t lost on us.
Given how it’s lunch time, I finally concur with the sentiment sold to me all those years ago in Delhi — a Keventers shake isn’t just a cool drink, it’s a ruddy old meal by itself.
As they expand into Anna Nagar and Phoenix MarketCity in the months to come, all I can hope is that their shakes remain just as thick, and their attitude towards parking becomes ever so thin.
All milkshakes are prices at Rs 150 upwards, excluding tax. On Khader Nawaz Khan Road.