Courtyard by Marriot

It was our anniversary and we went here yesterday.
Its probably a 'Been there , Done that' place for most food lovers in Chennai . But im a relative noob in this city, and i have not been here before.
We had a LOT of plans ,which involved going to the temple around 5 pm , doing other things between 5 and 8 pm and finally hitting the place by 8.
Thanks to the weather +traffic playing spoilsport , we left the temple @ 5.30 pm , and reached Marriot @ 8 PM !!!! ( doing nothing in the meantime , but driving at a terminally-ill snail's pace , and me singing tTamil songs off-key, with the radio , to my husbands great annoyance).
At The Marriot they do a decent bomb check- ( perhaps after they bombed the Marriot in Islamabad ?)
For car : sniffer dog , burly guy with a flashlight.
For you : walk in metal detector , bag check. Thankfully they dont frisk you bcs its pretty out there in the open.
So ultimately you feel super secure for the next hour or two.Everyone knows there s no dearth of food here by any standards , so im not gonna list what we ate here .(Partly bcs its a huge list and i'm lazy to type , and also bcs there were too many names to memorize).
The cold salads were all brilliant. Essentially simple , unique flavors to each of them.

The chef seems to be addicted to basil ( reflected in the salsa they served with their complementary bread , AND in their pizza sauce ).
Now this is something every pizzeria could easily follow .Basil is the secret weapon , and yesterday i found out , there s no such thing as too much of Basil. It gives such an incredibe burst of freshness to every bite.

Pasta from the pasta counter was fantastic. Some of the asparagus was a little too thick to chew.Avoidable.
There was quite a spread of Indian gravies for the Naans. Everything worked well for me.
The Cheddar Potato , Veg Parmigiano were exceptional.
For rice there was Tamarind rice and curd rice . I completely skipped those, as im not a huge fan of either.But my husband loved both , and said the pickles were very authentic too.

I was delighted to find they had about ten icecreams on offer with abt ten toppings to boot !!I took small scoops of butterscotch , coffee and chocolate, with almond slivers.And that made my day :)
My husband liked mango and other fruit flavors .There were about 15 other desserts about which i have the following to say :
The Mascarpone and chocolate brownie : out of the world !!
Walnut brownie : best walnut brownie ive had
Banana herb cake : fantastic. had Basil in it (!!)
Reinforces my theory that basil tastes good with anything.
Some other banana cake : yummy.
Orange mousse (?) , some other fruit mousse : its ok to taste gelatin @ other places but I least expected it here. Sad.

All in all we had avery, very good time/meal .

Service : Very enthusiastic in .spurts.
( Dining air-hostesses are a major distraction to the waiters , so the boys tend to wander around in zig zag lines, at times :P)
My only gripe :The two seater tables are a tad too small. Since they have an impressive amount of space at their disposal ,the table could have been bigger by a few square inches.