Chennai turned 375. And the world jolted awake to it. Oft disdained as Bengaluru’s dowdy cousin, Chennai has acquired new quotients of glamour. And skies jagged with lofty pooled condominiums.

New York Times and Lonely Planet Magazine declared it amongst the best places in the world to visit and one of the world’s top 10 cities respectively. BBC just announced it as one of the world’s top 10 cities to live in. Chennai always had quirk and character and tons of culture (this is, after all, India’s cultural and intellectual capital). Now it has a slick savviness as expats, both domestic and international, invade to invest- it’s all happening in Chennai, from IT to the manufacture of luxury international cars including BMW, Audi, Renault, Hyundai and Nissan, whilst Ferraris and Porsches zoom about (traffic permitting) and gluttonous Rolls Royce Phantoms swallow up streets streaked with sophisticated designer boutiques. It’s time for life in the fast lane, clearly.

Chennai has excited attention for the sudden explosion of luxury hotels that swirled it away into glamorous galaxies. Indeed, when the Hilton’s top boys manifested to launch the region’s flagship hotel, I wondered why Chennai. Admittedly, on landing in Chennai from Paris in 2010 I felt my heart plummet, my aesthetic sensibilities cringe. Today, Chennai has international award-winning hotels attesting its economic inflection and tremendous transformation. These aren’t just hotels but cultural embodiments that meticulously and mindfully infuse Chennai’s grand cultural heritage into their concepts, thereby reflecting this city’s very unique personality. If the Hilton celebrates Chennai’s famed sari culture so that a golden filigree drapes around the lobby like a sari, then the Park Hyatt, amongst the sleekest hotels you’ll enter, weaves the city’s textile culture pervasively into every aspect of the design, decor and artwork, whilst at the hotel’s Dining Room restaurant young Exec Sous-Chef Balaji spins his native cuisine into gastronomic masterpieces textured like fine taffeta. Needle-less to say, Chennai’s culinary culture has sharpened.

Whilst epitaphs have long been composed to Mumbai’s culture (had it one), Chennai’s ancient culture thrives at the threshold of evolution as dashes of modernity invigorate and regenerate hoary art forms. If Tamil Nadu’s legendary “bronzes” seemed obsolescent, then the pantheon of Hindu gods bolted out of slumber and struck Poompoohar Handicrafts with online revival: in jet-set Chennai, cyber galleries parade for purchase eternal divinity incarnate in bronze and granite sculpted into Sivas, Vishnus and Ganeshas exhibiting spectacular dance poses or Sarasvati, Goddess of Art, strumming serenely on her sitar.

Only in Chennai 2000-year-old art forms co-exist with contemporary art so that Gallery Veda could recently auction works of local artists at higher prices than a Picasso lithograph in London. Moreover, “Art Chennai,” which Forbes voted amongst India’s top 3 contemporary art initiatives, has poll-vaulted into India’s biggest contemporary art show. Partner “art hotel” Hyatt Regency Chennai proceeded to become the “World’s Best Marketed Hotel.” Indeed, the dramatic metamorphosis of a derelict beehive-infested warehouse into a 5-star hosting Asia’s largest collection of bee-themed art began a bewildering new artistic era in Chennai, hitherto India’s most damningly conservative city. The hotel bee-dazzled with the most astonishing festival I’ve attended, the Bee Festival, that integrated music, dance, poetry, architecture, science and food bee-fittingly into the bee theme. Hyatt Regency sustained the buzz by implementing Tamil Nadu’s healing techniques based on Siddha (that predates ayurveda) at Chennai’s first luxury spa. Now, the city boasts some of India’s finest city spas, each incorporating Tamil medicinal expertise.

If I didn’t flee Chennai following incipient dismay, it’s because the food overwhelmed. So utterly that I haven’t returned to Paris since. I quickly learned why the French have long loved Chennai- Tamils share French fervour for art in its entirety, notably culinary art. But Tamil culinary culture is as ancient as its temples, to which it attaches, and the Tamils are more finical than the French (est-ce possible?!!) about their food, considered sacrosanct. Indeed, as novices in Chennai we sieved the marauding North Indian expats from locals by their approach to food: if North Indians continued vociferating at a restaurant, Tamils fell silent when the food arrived. And the BBC voting Chennai amongst the world’s best cities to live in seems directly related to the quality of food!

Chennai’s epicurean eccentricities often amuse. New Year’s Eve parties are about boozing, right? Not so in Chennai! The Park Hyatt’s party was to commence at 8 pm but by 7 pm multifarious stalls dispensing top-notch tagines, can-match-the-Middle-East mezzes and spruce sushi were savagely assailed by 1000 gourmets. I linger over a “street stall” filling chichi paper bags with bountiful nuts, dry fruit and mad masalas observing the spectacle, as new Polish Exec Chef Grzegorz Odolak (whose passion for Chennai purportedly exceeds my own) beams at the frenzy his latest culinary extravaganza has generated. When the alcohol runs out, the crowds don’t. They roll to Chef Balaji’s riot of Indian specialities straddled by desserts of vast eternity (surely an improvement upon poet Andrew Marvel?)

But Chennai is a spirited place. The locals are notorious for their alcoholic predilections and the new 24-hr liquor licence has propelled the bar scene to new highs. If I scorned cocktails (snooty about my French wines), then in Chennai I discover cocktails and the Flying Elephant restaurant’s young mixologist Abhishek Shukla who won silver at the Monin Cup held at the Eiffel Tower. He says he refuses promotions because he couldn’t leave Chennai, preferred to Buddha Bar (Paris and Dubai) and Manhattan’s bars where he trained. After swigging his Chocolate Mimosa (champagne with bobbing beads of burst-in-your-mouth chocolate accompanied by svelte chocolate and orange ravioli) and Chocolate & Mandarin Mojito including rum infused with 3 citrus fruits I thank God Abhishek abandoned his Air Force engineering studies to engineer flights of a higher sort.

You have flights of every sort at Hilton’s breezy terrace-top Q Bar (likelier Queue Bar given that all Chennai’s expats queue to enter, including an award-winning Australian beverage director from a rival hotel). Naturally, a Hilton manager winks, “You see why we’ve never advertised?” They’ve been unnecessarily modest about reticent new Executive Chef Yogendra Pal, possibly India’s best executive chef, whose bar food shames exalted gastronomy at London’s Michelin-starred Indian restaurants. Flights of fancy went into sambuka-doused prawns curled over an upturned wine glass that are set ablaze before you. It’s the night of some festival (Chennai is a non-stop festival) and fireworks explode the heavens whilst delectable detonations happen on my palate as I lounge in cool cabanas having cute Q naans coyly wrapped around oh-so-tender kebabs. Sizzling babes pulsate to the music around the suave colour-changing infinity pool from where you spot planes take off- no you aren’t drunk, the airport is close-by. Besides, this is jet-set Chennai!

Things slow down at Ayna, the city’s finest gastronomic pan-Indian restaurant, where Chef Yogi has the gourmet gallivanter board his “train of taste,” a slow coach that stops every month at “stations” from Tamil Nadu through various Indian states like Hyderabad and Goa, culminating in Kashmir. Every city sees food festivals but none as many and as ingenious as Chennai’s.

Unsurprisingly then, the city commemorated its 375th anniversary in the only way it could. With a hundred million food festivals. During which I discovered places I never knew existed like Pride Hotel and Marina restaurant, with chefs who’d spent a decade on cruise liners or in Miami. Hence Chennai’s international flavour? This South Indian city’s intrepid new palate thrills Focaccia’s Milanese Chef Roberto Zorzoli as Chennaikars applaud his experimental Arabiatta and Pesto Genovese that aren’t pastas but pizzas (such innovations would consternate Mumbaikars) whilst Hyatt Regency’s whip-cracking new Executive Chef Subrata had to unleash a gargantuan globe-trot of a brunch at Spice Haat to satiate the penchant for world cuisine.

Amidst accumulating cosmopolitanism, expats streak the East Coast Rd with its voracious villas and gather to gossip and gourmand at exotic cafes that have re-invented the traditional “Madras cafe,” typically a shabby sonorous venue for local food. Who’d have imagined in Chennai you could bask al fresco on gardened terraces like at new Madras Square after browsing in its stylish furniture gallery or pick up astonishing homemade breads, if there’s any left once expats have done shopping for their daily bread (and cookies). All gone? Worth knowing that the same young chef who makes as-good-as-in Europe breads makes better-than-in-Colombo Sri Lankan food- although he has never visited Lanka and recreates recipes his voyaging boss culled! I have a sneaking suspicion that the Tamils are the world’s most talented chefs…

Chennai has Aussi connections too. Pooja Srinivasan deploys techniques learned in Australia at just-launched Crest Cafe so cool you’d think you’re in Manhattan. Confronted with those super cake shakes and red velvet pancakes one wonders who’d have the lissom lines of the figures on the nifty mural before me. Then I see a chic lass with the sveltest waist and pointiest stilettos teetering out (laden with buxom brownies). Chennai has stream-lined. As my fork punctures another pert curry-leaved French fry (that French-Tamil connection keeps recurring) I recall how heifer-like dimensions (at least) were until late but feminine norm here.

Chennaikars have decided upon Frenchification. Cupcakes Amore establishes this with sugar-flayed cupcakes- extraordinary in a city once infamous for its saccharine predilections. Owner Kavita Chesetty relates how her family regaled British monarchs (which wouldn’t have required much pernickety given the dubiety of British taste, especially royal). Kavita’s rigorous training in Australia, where an Italian taught her baking, is better appreciated by Chennai’s prissy-palated posh set who rock up in Prada and Chanel for her fresh-fresh food. Incidentally, Kavita once ran an inspired epicurean magazine Malli. Pity resources couldn’t nourish themselves. Then again, she can now focus on those fab cupcakes which are well-travelled and have been known to manifest in NYC. Kavita’s sweeter than her cakes are and if she kidnaps you for home-cooked South Indian food served up with fascinating family anecdotes, don’t resist!

The less fortuned try long-established Kapila Dasa that holds fort, albeit rather a jazzy fort, in the snazzy Express Mall where you’ve South Indian thalis and signature kadubu idlis like alabaster menhirs in contemporary spaces.

Food is BIG business. A new restaurant opens every week. If you can’t circumnavigate all Chennai’s eateries then infiltrate the Times Of India Awards when starlets descend upon stalls presented by award-winning eateries. The awards themselves, advertisement-driven, don’t quite cut the mustard. Take them with a pinch of salt, maybe an ocean. Mercifully the editors, chuckling over a sub-standard “award-winning” dosa at the gala, reveal that they’d lunched at popular local restaurant Sangeetha on crisp golden dosas (for which, incidentally, I’d re-route flights via Chennai when I lived in Paris and Oxford). I protest at why Sangeetha wasn’t awarded when theirs are the best dosas in the universe. An editor quips, “Next year we’ll invent a category the ‘Best Dosa in the Universe’ and award it to Sangeetha, just for you.” Well, there’s Chennai hospitality for you!

Traveller’s Tips

Season’s Seatings: Margahzi Month (15 Dec-15 Jan) is the “Chennai Season” of classical music & dance with over 100 concerts/day luring culture enthusiasts from the world over. The Music Academy, called the “Wimbledon of Music,” is where to surfeit on Chennai’s cultural plethora. Recommended concerts: iconoclastic T.M. Krishna for vocals, world-famous Alarmel Valli for Bharat Natyam and Sujata Mohapatra for Odissi.

Takes the Cake: Chennai has become a cake colossus. Over Christmas, here’s where you’ll find the best damn Christmas pudding, mince pies and stollen ever, made by 20-something-year-olds at Biscotti.

Bite before the Flight: New afternoon tea at scintillating Est (Hilton Chennai) near the airport offers 4 short-eats (including Chettinad chicken puffs and masala vadai), 4 pastries and English teas for just Rs550 which rather makes it chari-tea. Ask manager Mr Karthik for masala chai he has perfected to a tea. Chai-ers!