What is Kerala food? A beginner's guide to Kerala cuisine
If your idea of Indian food is creamy tomato sauces and butter naan, Kerala will surprise you. Kerala is a narrow strip of green coast in the far south-west of India, and its kitchen is built on different things: coconut, curry leaves, black pepper and a long history of trade by sea.
Why Kerala tastes different
Kerala sits on the Malabar Coast, where black pepper, cardamom, cloves and ginger have grown for centuries. Traders came for these spices long before most of Europe had heard of Indian food, and the region's cooking still shows it: spices are used generously, but fresh ingredients lead.
Three things you will notice again and again:
- Coconut in every form. Grated, ground into a paste, pressed into milk, and used as oil. Kerala's name is often said to come from kera, the word for coconut.
- Curry leaves and mustard seeds. Many dishes finish with a tempering: mustard seeds, dried chillies, shallots and curry leaves crackling in hot coconut oil, poured over the dish at the end.
- Sour notes. Tamarind, raw mango and kudampuli (a dried, smoky fruit also known as Malabar tamarind) give curries a tang that cream-based sauces never have.
Breakfast, tea shops and late-night street food
Kerala eats a lot of rice and a lot of breads made from rice or wheat:
- Appam: a lacy, bowl-shaped pancake, crisp at the edge and soft in the middle.
- Puttu: steamed cylinders of rice flour layered with coconut, often eaten with chickpea curry (kadala).
- Idiyappam: soft "string hoppers" made from pressed rice-flour dough.
- Porotta: the flaky, layered flatbread that is the star of Kerala's tea shops and late-night street stalls. We wrote a whole guide to it: porotta and beef roast, explained.
Meat, fish and vegetables
Kerala is one of the few places in India where beef is part of everyday cooking, alongside chicken, pork, fish and a huge range of vegetarian dishes. Fish curries with kudampuli are a coastal classic. Vegetarian dishes such as avial, thoran and olan are not an afterthought: they are the heart of the festival feast, the sadhya. See how to eat an Onam sadhya.
What to order first
If it is your first time, try one of each:
- Porotta with beef roast: the classic Kerala pairing.
- A biryani (Kerala biryani is lighter on spice than many others, and fragrant with ghee and fried onions).
- Something crunchy: banana fritters (pazhampori), cutlets, samosas or pakoda.
- A vegetable dish with coconut, so you taste the other side of the cuisine.
Our menu changes with the kitchen, so check what is on today on the menu page. You can read more about the region and its kitchens on our Kerala page, or order directly for takeaway or a table at Petersburger Str. 39, 10249 Berlin.