The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : An appetite for the native and the exotic

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Tuesday, Feb 26, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

An appetite for the native and the exotic

R.Sujatha

There are restaurants in the city that boast of cuisines from across the country

PHOTO: M. KARUNAKARAN

SPICY SNACK: A roadside ‘pani puri’ stall on Ritchie Street. —

CHENNAI: What is exotic to them is commonplace to us. Perhaps that is why there are a variety of restaurants in the city that boast of cuisines from across the country. Most migrants, however, continue to favour their native food even if they have made Chennai their home for decades.

Eateries selling paani puri/bhel puri, kachoris and pav bhaji have a clientele among south Indians, who seek them as snacks. But, a common refrain among north Indian settlers here is that most of them prefer south Indian food such as idli, dosa and vada with a generous helping of colourful chutneys and sambar.

North Indians feel south Indian dishes, particularly Tamil Nadu’s vegetarian fare, is less spicy and more nutritive.

“I get authentic Bengali food at home,” says Sushymal Kundu, whose wife has taught her Tamil maid to cook Bengali fare. Though Punjabi dhabas have mushroomed across the city, only a handful of them serve ‘asli Punjabi food’, and people like Harbhajan Singh continue to favour home-cooked food.

Maharastra Mandal secretary Indu Padukai says young Maharashtrians new to the city would like to eat out, but a few restaurants serve native dishes. “We make them at home and when we go out we settle for south Indian dishes,” she says.

Kantilal M. Saiya came to Chennai in 1973. “We do not go for Gujarati food but look for special Madarasi dishes at hotels,” he says. At home, Gujarati dishes are made every day. But, Meenakshi Bhat, whose family migrated several years ago from Kutch has assimilated Tamil culture completely. They speak a version of the dialect but eat typical south Indian vegetarian food. “I have not developed a taste for Gujarati food and though we do add some amount of sugar and jaggery to food it is not at all like the native food.”

Every Sunday for 15 years now, Kapil Kumar Maheshwari, a Marwari Jain, who was born in Chennai, eats Madarasi lunch with his family at a hotel on Kodambakkam High Road. But at home it is traditional Marwari cuisine.

H. Lalmingmawii of Mizoram prefers north-eastern Indian cuisine. “I did not have a problem with Manipuri food. At the beginning south Indian food was totally different (to my palate). It was difficult to adjust to the smell of sambar and rasam. Now I really love rasam and have learnt to make it,” she says.

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