When Tandoor opened shop in the early 1970s in Kochi, it was a curiosity. Skewered chicken smeared with red masala (readied for the tandoor ) was imagined as ‘freshly killed chicken, dripping blood’. “Those days, from the road, you could see inside; we would spy the skewered chickens and gawk in wonder at the sight. We hadn’t heard of anything called ‘ tandoori chicken’, and when it was served with greens and half a lemon, we didn’t know how to eat it,” says Sajeev Kumar, one of the old-timers. Tandoor was then, probably, one of the first places in Kochi or even Kerala to serve tandoori chicken.
Those days, opening a restaurant was considered an unconventional choice of career, unless, of course, it was family business. “Why are you starting an eatery?” was often thrown at young, Delhi-bred Mohan Divakaran. Fresh out of a hotel management course in Pusa, he wanted to open a North Indian restaurant in Kochi and introduce Kochi to the tandoori experience. Mohan transformed a godown on Layam Road, into an eatery with an open kitchen, with simple cane chairs adding to the informal feel of a ‘dhaba’.
A place of memories
Cut to 2017. Twenty-something Krishnan Menon, a Bengaluru-based techie puts as his WhatsApp DP, briefly, a glass of water with an Insta sticker that says ‘Tandoor Restaurant’. Of the first time he went there, he says, “I might have been in my diapers!” His family’s ‘relationship’ with Tandoor however is older; his maternal grandfather used to take Menon’s mother, her sister and their mother there once a month. “It is a place of memories — for my mother and me.”
Krishna Mohan, Mohan’s son who runs the restaurant, coincidentally, mouths the same line, “Over the years, apart from the food, we are also a place of memories.” Krishna runs the restaurant; Mohan handed over the reins to his elder son, who is also an actor. “This place, down the years, has become close to the hearts of our guests... birthdays, 60th anniversaries — we’ve even had people celebrate their 100th birthday here! We often get a couple of generations of regulars eating here.”
Nostalgic nuances
The interiors have changed over the years; gone is the rustic décor, open kitchen and with it the cane chairs. The insides are dim-lit and cosy; on the walls are paintings of a sardar and his many moods. It is nostalgia-junkie paradise.
Kadhai chicken and Hong Kong chicken are the signature dishes at the multi-cuisine restaurant, each with a loyal following. “We haven’t changed a thing, the recipes haven’t been tweaked. When people return, they remember the taste and even the colour of their favourites. God forbid! If anything changes. There have been additions to the menu, but we haven’t touched the recipes of the favourites,” says Krishna, who in these days of hyperactive social media behaviour chooses to keep a low profile. The cooks were brought from the North, including a tandoor which is still used.
The Andhra connection
In the mid-1990s, Chillies, an Andhra food specialty restaurant was added on the first floor. Mohan’s chance meeting with an Andhra cook in Andhra Pradesh was the start of that story, Krishna says: “The Chillies thali ‘meals’ are very different from the naadan meals (Kerala thali meal) and are popular with the lunch crowd. We ensure that everything, down to the rice and oil we use, is authentic. Even the masalas .”
He is equipped to chip in, if the kitchen is short of staff. His father sent him to work at restaurants in Delhi so he could get a hang of the business. “I have worked in the kitchens of Pandara Market eateries, at Gulati and others for almost a year. I learnt how to cook tandoori (and other Indian) and Chinese.” He also judges cookery shows and competitions.
Weekends are especially busy; there is the constant buzz of conversation and laughter. Finding a table on those days depends entirely on luck. Krishna makes it a point to be at the restaurant interacting with the guests — one of the things regulars appreciate. “We even have a couple of the old hands that the guests turn to; it is good to see a familiar face isn’t it?” he explains.
Come December and Tandoor turns 43. There is competition today. But Tandoor has stood the test of time.
In this weekly column, we peek into the histories of some of the most iconic restaurants
