A Culinary Pilgrimage in Kochi

Traversing the tranquil paths of a city, after a decade or more, could have you experiencing it from a whole new lens. Kochi has changed over time and then not so, too, where its food and its authenticity are concerned. Here's a taste of it

Text: Dr Nishant Kumar

Iremember first visiting Kochi, then known as Cochin, more than 30 years ago. It was so different from anywhere else I had been that it yet stands out in my memory. The Taj Malabar on the Arabian Sea was an unique property, and it is here for the first time I tasted appam and the varieties of curries and stews, which we are now so familiar with. Back then, good appam was only available in Kerala and if you wanted to have a flaky Malabar paratha, that is where you needed to venture.

Things however have changed in the last three decades. Appam is now available in most multi-speciality restaurants and is a common feature in breakfast buffets across the country. A Kerala fish curry can be found in some form or the other in restaurants across the breadth of the country.

Visiting Kochi, for me, has always been a gastronomic experience. When I think of Kochi and Kerala I think about the backwaters, the serenity, the huge diversity that one finds in the city with the fishing nets, the Jewish Quarter and the Royal Palace. An added attraction for me has always been the famous Guruvayur Temple located an hour and half away from Kochi with its elephant sanctuary where more than 50 elephants of the temple are housed.

This time I visited Kochi after a decade, and my endeavour was to try authentic food, not only in luxurious fine-dining settings, but in different locations traversing from the very basic dining spots the locals frequent to the more upscale restaurants.

On this visit I was staying at the Grand Hyatt Kochi Bolgatty, a relatively new luxury property on Bolgatty Island overlooking the backwaters of the Vembanad Lake. They have a very accomplished team of chefs with Latha, as their Chef de Cuisine. Chef Latha is a celebrated chef having written multiple books on the local food of Kerala, but it is her simplicity and warm- heartedness which makes an impression on me. She cooks food that she knows well and has been eating and feeding others all her life. She is ably assisted by Chef Selvaraj, the other Chef de Cuisine.

My first meal was a thali that was specially curated for me. There is so much variety in Malabari cuisine that a thali is the best way to try and sample many things at one go. My meal started with Chicken 65, which is deep-fried chicken marinated with special Kerala spices. Very simplistically, it can be thought of as a well-seasoned and spiced chicken pakora, but it is truly delicious. The curry leaves and shallots add a lot of character to this dish.

The next dish I had was the Meen Pollichathu. This can be made with a myriad of fishes and for me they used king fish, which is also known as neymeen or seer fish or ayakoora. These are large fish, which are slightly oily and perfect for either grilling or being poached in a curry. This is one of the more expensive fishes available in Kerala and has a wonderful steak-like consistency. The other advantage is that it has only one central bone making it so much easier to eat. The Meen Pollichathu is almost like the state dish of Kerala. It is fish steak cooked with shallots, kokum, then wrapped in banana leaves and grilled. The king fish itself is flaky and has a wonderful texture, and the flavours of the pollichathu range between the sweetness and the oiliness of the fish combined with the tanginess of the shallots, kokum and spices.

The other fish dishes on the thali were all served with king fish and included a Meen Manga Thakkali Curry, which is fish cooked in tomato, mango and coconut-based spicy sauce; a Meen Moilee, which is fish stewed in coconut milk and coconut oil − a great accompaniment to idiyappam or rice hoppers; and a Meen Mulakittathu, a spicy red fish curry where tamarind is the predominant ingredient, and this goes very well with the Malabar paratha.

Kozhi Pidi Curry, which is chicken cooked with the rice dumplings and roasted coconut paste was a dish I
had not eaten before. Pothirachi Kaya Peralan is beef and raw banana simmered with Kerala spices.

For the vegetarian part of the meal, we had an avial, which is mixed vegetables with yogurt, ground coconut, cumin and curry leaves and pulissery, which is pineapple cooked with coconut paste and yogurt.

The Parippu Pradhaman, which is roasted lentils cooked with jaggery and coconut milk and then tempered with coconut, is a wonderful accompaniment with both the Malabar paratha as well as the rice.

All the above are served with Malabar paratha, which is a flat layered bread made of refined flour. The multiple layers and the richness of the paratha served in Kerala makes you believe that everything else served in other restaurants across the country is a poor representation of the original. You can try the curries with appam or idiyappam and of course steamed rice is a staple with any meal.

It is a common misconception that all curries from Kerala taste the same and have coconut. Each one has a very distinctive taste and Chef Latha is very keen to point out the very real differences in each of the curries. The Meen Manga Curry has a predominantly raw mango-based flavour, though there is coconut milk and coconut-based sauce in this, the raw mango is the star. The moilee is a much milder curry where the coconut milk and the coconut oil are the main ingredients. The mulakittathu has tamarind as its strongest ingredient, which is very evident with the tanginess and the slight sourness that the dish brings.

Another revelation for me in this trip to Kochi was the chukku kaapi, an herbal coffee with dry ginger and black pepper and a variety of other spices. Chef Latha makes this herself and it is one of her trade secrets. Having had chukku kaapi on multiple occasions during the trip, I realised that the version made by her is infinitely better than what is served by others. It sounds incredible to think that we have now made our own variety of masala coffee from the eponymous masala chai, but this is a wonderful drink. Not only is it brimming with flavours and aroma, but it is also wonderful for your health. It has its origin in Ayurveda and with ingredients like ginger, black pepper, cumin, jaggery, basil, it has lots of medicinal qualities, which are meant to be good for you, particularly aiding in digestion, and it has a great effect on coughs and colds as well.

We are sharing Chef Latha’s original recipe for the chukku kaapi and I highly recommend that you try it. Whenever you are in Kochi next, it is worth visiting the Grand Hyatt only to sample this coffee.

Another favourite of mine which we do not get enough of in Bombay or other parts of the country is the banana dosa. This is a unique recipe found down south and made only in a few places. Dakshin, the speciality restaurant across ITC, used to do a wonderful banana dosa as a starter. Chef Latha and her team were kind enough to serve me great banana dosa, but what surprised me most was the myriad of pickles they serve this with. We all know about mango pickle, lemon pickle, however, Chef Latha’s collection included manga achar (mango pickle), kadumanga achar (tender mango pickle), naranga achar (lemon pickle), karakka achar (dates pickle), chemmeen achar (prawn pickle), fish pickle, beef pickle and a few other varieties. There is also a dried prawn powder, which is seasoned with Kerala spices, which adds great flavour to any dish. It is almost like the gunpowder we use over idli, but has a much more intense ‘prawny’ flavour.

Having eaten at a 5-star establishment, I was next keen to try what the locals eat and where they eat. A restaurant almost universally recommended by everyone starting from chefs at the hotel, to my driver, to my tour guide, to the hotel manager and my few friends in Kerala is Vellakanthari. This is a restaurant whose name you will hear often, and it is unique, in that it serves more than 30 fish dishes.

Located between a toll station and a police station on a dusty highway, one can easily miss this place if you are not looking out for it. A few steps down from the highway you are led to what looks like someone’s home, thatched roofs with multiple women serving the large crowds waiting for a table. The restaurant is run by a husband and wife and their daughter, with about 15 to 20 other women who all work together to make Vellakanthari what it is.

You are warned this is a no-frills restaurant where even the menu is hanging off a tree at the entrance and there is another menu on a whiteboard inside the restaurant. The only luxury here is a fan, no air-conditioning, and the décor is minimalist with steel tables and plastic chairs.

The dishes are pre-prepared and placed at one end of the restaurant. All you have to do is identify what you want to eat from the menu, and if like me, language is an issue, then you can point directly at the dish you want and they will scoop it out, heat it and serve it to you. This is as quick and as basic as it gets, but people queue here for hours to eat.

The menu is extensive and I am told that a lot of dishes available at Vellakanthari are typical dishes eaten at home, but never found in a restaurant. A good example of this would be the Fish Head Curry. It is a well-known delicacy amongst Malayalis, however, not a dish routinely found on restaurant menus.

They specialise in Pearl Spot or karimeen, which is a local fish and has now been declared the fish of Kerala. This is a small fish, which is flaky and is the fish of choice for the locals.

In addition to the karimeen, they have an assortment of prawn dishes, beef, duck, crab and king fish (neymeen). It is a first- come-first-serve restaurant, so once the dishes are finished, that is it for the day.

The prices are so reasonable that one can try almost everything on the menu if you can find the appetite. Most dishes range between Rs 250-Rs 400.

I started with the Karimeen Pollichathu and then Neymeen Fry, which is Pearl Spot grilled with banana leaf and the king fish, which is deep-fried.

The problem with a restaurant like this is that the food has been cooked long before you are going to eat it and so textures and temperature of the meal do get compromised by the repeated heating and refrying of the food. I found the fish to be too dry for my liking and that is possibly because it has been sitting in its vessel since the morning and then reheated a few times. The Prawn Fry was again a bit stiff for my liking; however, the authentic flavours are something to write home about. There is a definite difference between the way the masala is made at Vellakanthari than at the other fine-dining restaurants. I tried a little bit of everything including the Crab Roast, the Prawn Curry, the Prawn Fry and the Malabar paratha.

As an experience, it is definitely high on my list because it is so unique in the way this restaurant has been structured. There is a great choice to be had and it is home-cooked Malayali cuisine.

But, while eating here was an experience for me, it is not one I would recommend to most people. It is worth going and trying if you can endure the heat because it is an unique concept, but if you are in Kochi only for a few days there are better meals to be had.

After trying fine-dining in a 5-star hotel and dining like the locals in a shack by the highway, it was time to try something middle of the road. When in Kochi this kind of cuisine is best served by Paragon.

Established almost seven decades ago in Calicut, Paragon has now got multiple restaurants across Kerala and also has a very successful outlet in Dubai. They serve a fusion of Malabar region’s Moplah and Thiyya cuisines and are known for their quality as well as their middle-of-the-road pricing. You can have a lavish meal for two with your choice of fish and prawns for less than Rs 2000.

I tried the Paragon at Lulu Mall and was surprised at the crowds waiting to be seated. It is not unusual to have to wait for upto an hour for a table, particularly during lunchtime. Their menu is extensive and apart from their speciality Malabar cuisine they also serve North Indian, Chinese and Italian cuisines.

I, of course, was there to sample the best they had in their speciality cuisine. Our server was quick to point out to me that their portions are large and so the best I could do was try their seafood sampler. With that he suggested I must try their Kozhi Porichathu, which is Malabari masala- flavoured chicken deep-fried to perfection. The other must-have dish he recommended was their Raw Mango Prawn Curry served with Malabar paratha.

The seafood sampler started with Chemmeen Pollichathu, which is medium-sized prawns marinated with special masala and deep-fried. Then, Koonthal Varattiyathu, which is tender baby squid cooked with ginger, garlic, onion and ground spices along with roasted coconut and curry leaves. Next was Karimeen Pollichathu, again, which is Pearl Spot wrapped in banana leaf and baked, and lastly, Chuttulli Meen, which is a recipe handed down from ancient Jewish immigrants where king fish is marinated in a mélange of pearl onions and green spices, and grilled.

The fried chicken, the squid, the prawn, the king fish, the Pearl Spot were all delightful. There is not a dish here which I would not highly recommend. As this is the first time I was trying squid on this visit to Kerala it was a wonderfully new addition to things that I had already tried. The roasted coconut and curry leaves had a wonderful depth of flavour as well as texture to this dish and the tenderness and sweetness of the baby squid are very well balanced with the garlic and the ground spices. The king fish was prepared very differently to what I had been eating before and again the fish is so oily and flaky, almost having a steak-like texture, that it is a must-try.

The Raw Mango Prawn Curry with the Malabar paratha was everything that food does to make you happy. This was possibly the best Malabar paratha I have had on my trip to Kerala. I believe for dishes like dosa and Malabar paratha, it is the scale at which they are made which makes these dishes perfect. I have always found that the dosa at a 5-star hotel is never as good as your roadside dosawala who is churning out possibly 150 to 200 dosas in 3 to 4 hours. The Malabar paratha at Paragon adds nothing new to the ingredients, but it is so much more fluffy and flaky than anything else I had tried that it was a wonderful revelation. I am told by the locals that the best Malabar paratha is either available at the Grand Hotel or at Paragon.

The meal here is surprisingly reasonable with most dishes ranging between Rs 300-Rs 500, which is quite a steal. Portions are large and it is impossible for one person to finish everything.

My last stop on my culinary pilgrimage in Kochi was to the revered and often called the ‘best restaurant in Kochi’ – the Rice Boat. Located at the Taj Malabar Hotel and designed to give the impression of a traditional rice boat, this restaurant boasts views of the backwaters and the historic Mattancherry from its location on the Wellington Island. During lunch it is not uncommon to spot dolphins swimming past you while you are dining.

Chef Meril Aricatt, the Executive Chef at the hotel and General Manager Sibi Mathew, are perfect hosts. To make the experience more memorable we took the Taj speedboat from the Grand Hyatt to the Taj Malabar. The journey took less than 10 minutes, which would have been at least 45-minutes by road.A speedboat ride across the lake is a wonderful experience and being picked up in your own private boat from one location to the other is a thing dreams are made of. Travelling by boat across Kochi is not only practical but a romantic, memorable, and very unique, experience. I do hope the water ways around the lake will be developed further, though.

Our meal at Rice Boat was aptly titled Taste of Kerala. We started with Masala Grilled Squid, which are squid rings rubbed with ethnic spices and curry leaves followed by Tiger Prawns – Ularthiyathu (tossed with ginger, garlic, onions and tomatoes). Both were done to perfection, and in this restaurant there is not only a great emphasis on the quality of food, but also on the presentation. Next, was the crab and coconut soup, which essentially was a crab velouté with thyme and scallions. Not a typically Malabari dish, but a sublimely flavoured and very delicately balanced dish. Main courses included Meen Pollichathu, which is a standard in any meal you have in Kochi. Here, they used the king fish in a very similar preparation like others where the fish is cooked in a banana leaf. The Kerala Fish Curry had king fish cubes in grounded coconut curry, served with rice, idiyappam and Malabar paratha.

For dessert, we had the Karikku Soufflé, which was essentially coconut milk with whipped cream and malai. Again, something very regional, very light and very flavourful.

In vegetarian options they had the typical rasam, vegetable stew, avial (mélange of vegetables cooked with crushed coconut and yogurt) and the stew is served with an appam or idiyappam.

A meal here is a curated experience, presenting the best Kerala has to offer in an intimate setting along the backwaters, where service, presentation and authenticity of flavours and quality of ingredients are the focus.

Having eaten at other multiple locations on this trip − and some of them were just a quick fish curry and Malabar paratha, and therefore do not find themselves in this review − I have noticed that the quality of food across Kochi, particularly in the well-known and reputed institutions, is of a high standard.

To sum it all up: Vellakanthari is a different concept where the focus is on home-style cooking with a variety of fish dishes no restaurant I visited in Kochi could match. It is not gourmet cuisine but if you want to try what the locals eat, this is the place.

In the mid-range eating, which includes restaurants like Paragon, I think Kochi has achieved something that most other places struggle with. Good quality at moderate prices. There is no compromise in the quality of their raw ingredients and they use high-quality fish for all their preparations.

While there are multiple options to choose from in the fine-dining category, I particularly liked eating at the Grand Hyatt Kochi Bolgatty because they have a very authentic chef in Chef Latha. She ensures that there is a certain earthiness, genuineness and passion infused in her cooking. I am accustomed to meeting Michelin-star chefs or celebrity chefs, however, here is someone who is a celebrity amongst chefs and amongst her peers, is recognised as someone who has done something spectacular for the regional Malabar cuisine.

One cannot get enough of the variety of Malabar curries in Kerala, and despite Kerala Curry, appam, idiyappam and Malabar paratha being readily available all over the country now, there is yet something about eating a Malabar paratha with Raw Mango Fish Curry sitting along the backwaters. Nothing matches that experience.

Eating out in Kochi is enough reason for one to visit this beautiful city. I could go back again!