Chennai’s Yercaud Kitchen offers home-style Tamil food

Experience home-style Tamil food at Yercaud Kitchen, in Chennai, that offers a variety of dishes with unique flavors and spices.

When Shri Bala, a chartered accountant, began research on the food of the Sangam period, she did not know that it would result in a restaurant. After a series of succesful food pop-ups, she decided to launch Yercaud Kitchen, offering what she calls “home-style Tamil food”.

Cooks from the Karaikudi region dish up breakfast, lunch and dinner for guests. “I pay attention to balancing the spices, so each dish has a distinctive taste and flavour,” says Shri Bala. “If you take Tamil cuisine, the dominant spices are coriander seeds, pepper, red chilli, fennel and poppy seeds when it comes to non-vegetarian dishes. For a vegetable stir fry, on the other hand, the right proportion of chana dal, coriander seeds, hing and red chilli, dry roasted and ground to powder can add a dash of flavour and texture.”

Lunch begins with Apollo chicken. “This is a popular dish in Andhra, but I have re-engineered it and presented it with local flavours. The deep red colour is derived from the chilli powder,” says Shri Bala. Perfectly cooked, the chicken is tasty and well balanced. Next comes the Kadhambha pakoda, a deep-fried, popular evening snack of shredded vegetables mixed with rice and chickpea flour, sold by street vendors in Salem and Madurai.

“I grew up in the Salem region, so my dishes like the Yercaud dorai curry, Salem set thatu vadai and kozhi milagu kuzhambu are heavily influenced by spices from there,” says Shri Bala.

The restaurant’s signature dish is the Yercaud dorai curry which dates back to the colonial era when it was prepared by Indian butlers for British officers stationed in the hills during summer. The mutton gravy, cooked with drumstick and turnip, has a bracing flavour of ginger, intertwined with the aroma of clove, cinnamon, cardamom and pepper. Mop it up with nool parottas or plain rice.

We also try the prawn thokku curry, which features perfectly roasted prawns in a thick gravy of minced onions and tomatoes, sprinkled with fennel and fenugreek granules.

Of course, there is biryani. “Over the years, I have been observing the different types of biryani and various preparation methods in every region,” says Shri Bala. At Yercaud Kitchen, she serves kizhi biryani, wherein a portion of biryani is wrapped in banana leaf and roasted over a tawa to infuse the flavours of the dish. The one-pot rice dish is however rather disappointing as flavours are muted.