BANANA chips is the Keralites� great past-time. It is an anytime snack, immensely popular just by itself, and also as an accompaniment to coffee and lunch itself. In Calicut, this wonderful savoury is commonly sold everywhere. It is packaged and sold at Rs. 85 a kilo.

You can pick up the packets in every market and bakery. Even grocery stores sell them. The product tastes the same. That is the city�s guarantee, not the maker of the banana chips, because everybody uses the same banana, the same oil, and the same cutting and cooking process to make banana chips.

Look out for the shops where you can see them making the chips in full public view and buy your stock from there, hot and fresh. Though even if you miss out on buying the chips in the city, don�t fret, there is a small store in Calicut airport where you can pick it up for Rs. 90 a kilo. What�s Rs. 5 extra when your flight is being announced and this is your last resort to pick up Kerala�s favourite snack! One of Calicut�s most famous banana chips place is the Kumari Banana Chips & Sweets shops near the Paragon Restaurant at Kannur Road.

The shop is divided into three areas. One is the selling area, glass showcases and bottles, with a Malayali in a lungi behind the counter weighing and packing the banana chips that people buy. Then there is an outside area where three men sit on stools in the open, peeling the bananas that are brought in huge quantities. Next to them are two more men who sit thinly slicing the banana fruit and collecting the slices in a big dekchi. This is then passed inside to the frying area where in a big cauldron of coconut oil, the slices are fried.

It is a quick, smooth and easy operation, and fascinating to watch. The entire operation is also an attraction to the first-time visitor to Calicut and a day-time advertisement for the fine product of Kumari Banana Chips & Sweets.

The Nendra banana is used for the chips. This is a local banana and grown all over Kerala. A small three-wheeler keeps coming to deliver the bananas to the shop. The bananas cost Rs. 14 a kilo. One kilo has seven bananas which, when peeled and sliced, would give about 400 grams of chips.

The banana skins are not discarded. They are cooked as a vegetable and are high in iron content.

The banana fruit slices are quickly dipped into a pan of turmeric powder for them to catch that bright yellow colour. The chips are then deep-fried in coconut oil. The fire is fuelled by coconut shell, not that this contributes to the flavour, but, well, the Keralite will not have it any other way!