KOCHI: I was midway into a hearty Korean meal the first time someone mentioned ‘Choco Brown’. Specifically, their doughnuts.
After the near-overwhelming culinary journey of the exotic, I yearned to embrace the somewhat familiar. However, my idea of a doughnut as a rounding-off dessert was without sheen after some lacklustre experiences in the past. What prodded me on was my friend’s seemingly bombastic statement that Choco Brown had the best doughnuts in Kochi.
As a native resident of the city for over 30 years, I simply had to counter this Kottarakkara native. But first, I had to bite the bullet, er, the bun…
Under a canopy of trees just metres from the Arakkakadavu Bridge in Vennala, I found young men, letting go of their macho image, licking their fingers. Chocolate stained their cheeks. No one seemed to mind.
Perched on their bikes and with a chocolate bun in each hand, the conversation of the group dwindled to an occasional ‘mmm…’ All eyes were trained on the gooey chocolate that filled the bun’s centre, now seen oozing out.
“Doughnuts from Choco Brown are our favourite. They were already sold out, so we settled for chocolate buns, which are also equally good,” says Arjun Pradeep, a college student.
The surge in demand prompted Lovely S K, who runs the outlet with her partner Sanjeev K M, to increase the number of doughnuts produced. “The demand is very high. We run out of doughnuts by 5pm most days,” says Lovely.
How this four-month-old establishment has earned such a rave following, and that, too, from Arakkakadavu – a region which I had decades prior written off as where civilisation ended — is a complete mystery to me. So I ask around.
