Cuisine of Chennai

Tamil Nadu is famous for its hospitality and its deep belief that serving food to others is a service to humanity, so eating-out in its capital city Chennai, is a great experience and provides a glimpse of the unique lifestyle of the city. Chennai is known for Tamil cuisine, brought to the city by people who have migrated from different parts of Tamil Nadu. Its rich traditions offer a variety of dishes, not only vegetarian but also Non-Vegetarian food. Chennai has a large collection of restaurants, some of them are unique 'Speciality Restaurants', which serve 'Indian Cuisine' with an ambience to match, while most others cater South Indian tiffin and meals, at very reasonable prices.

Pure vegetarian restaurants under the brand name of Udupi cuisine, which is synonymous with delicious vegetarian food all over world, serve a variety of tiffin and vegetarian meals, mostly from South Indian state of Karnataka. Many of these restaurants have nowadays diversified and offer other Indian and Indianized Chinese dishes as well.

Tiffin or light meals is served for breakfast or as a snack. These are usually one or more dishes like Idli, Dosai, Idiyappam, Pongal and Vadai along with coconut Chutney, Sambar and Milagai podi. Tiffin is usually accompanied by hot filter coffee, the signature beverage of the city.

Dosai, crepes made from a fermented batter of rice and urad dal (gram), and is accompanied by sambar.

Idli, steamed rice-cakes, prepared from a fermented batter of rice and lentils, served with different kinds of chutney and sambhar.

Chettinad dishes like appam, uthappam.

Parota made with maida or all-purpose flour, perhaps similar to the north Indian wheat flour-based paratha.

Upma, made from wheat (rava), onion, green chillies.

Sevai or idiyappam, Rice noodles made out of steamed rice cakes.

Sambar, a thick stew of lentils with vegetables and spices.

Coffee is a major social institution in Southern Indian Tamil tradition. Its also called the Madras (a) Chennai Filter Coffee and is unique to this part of the world. They generally use gourmet coffee beans of the Arabica variety. The making of filter coffee is like a ritual, as the coffee beans are first roasted and then powdered. Sometimes they add chicory to enhance the aroma. They then use a filter set, few scoops of powdered coffee, enough boiling water is added to prepare a very dark liquid called the decoction. A 3/4 mug of hot milk with sugar, a small quantity of decoction is then served in Dabarah/Tumbler set, a unique Coffee cup.

Meals - Traditional

Food is generally classified into six tastes - sweet, sour, salt, bitter, pungent & astringent and traditional Tamil cuisine recommends that you include all of these six tastes in each main meal you eat. Each taste has a balancing ability and including some of each provides complete nutrition, minimizes cravings and balances the appetite and digestion.

Sweet (Milk, butter, sweet cream, wheat, ghee (clarified butter), rice, honey)

Sour (Limes and lemons, citrus fruits, yogurt, mango, tamarind)

Salty (Salt or pickles)

Bitter (Bitter gourd, greens of many kinds, turmeric, fenugreek)

Pungent (Chili peppers, ginger, black pepper, clove, mustard)

Astringent (Beans, lentils, turmeric, vegetables like cauliflower and cabbage, cilantro)

A typical meal (Lunch or Dinner) will be served on a banana leaf. As the staple diet is rice, steamed rice will be served along with a variety of vegetable dishes like sambar, dry curry, rasam and kootu. Meals are often accompanied by crisp appalams. After a final round of rice and curds or buttermilk or both, a meal is concluded with a small banana and a few betel leaves and nuts.

For a non-vegetarian meal, curries or dishes cooked with mutton, chicken or fish are included.

Meals - Restaurant

An Indian meal in restaurants is generally called 'Thali'. Its usually served on a round tray made of either Silver, Stainless steel or even Brass, with a selection of different dishes in small bowls. Depending on the regional cuisine they specialize, they offer a choice of vegetarian or non-vegetarian delicacies which are native to that region. For example one may encounter South Indian (veg) thali, Chettinad thali, Mumbai thali, Rajasthani thali or Gujarati thali.

Rice, even if it is in a modest amount seems to be essential to the popular definition of thali. While North Indian Thali consists mainly Indian Bread, like Chapati, Roti, Paratha, Phulka or Naan along with rice, South Indian Thali comes mostly with rice. In North Indian cuisine Pooris, Chappattis are offered first and the waiter serves the rice later, often in a separate bowl. The rest of the items like different Curries, Sweet and other miscellaneous items (Applams, Papad, Pickles and Beeda) is similar for both North Indian and South Indian Talis.

Thalis in some restaurant's may include "bottom-less" refills on all components of food, the idea is that one eats until fully satisfied. Such thalis are referred to as 'unlimited' thalis. In some places the term means that everything in the plate excepting a few items like the Sweet or Vada is open to unlimited helpings.

Finally a banana, beeda, and a glass of juice or lassi will be offered..

Cuisine from other parts of the world

Chennai is a major tourist destination, so its also popular for cuisines from other parts of the world. While Indian (which includes a diverse range of cuisines from other states of India), European Continental, and Chinese cuisine have been around for a long time, Mexican, Italian, Thai, Korean, Japanese and Mediterranean cuisine to name a few, have become popular with many restaurants exclusively specialising in these cuisines.