Try coconut milk coffee and neera at Coimbatore’s new vegan cafe

Discover the vegan and organic menu at Cheffy’s, including coconut milk coffee and traditional rice kanji.

What is the next best thing to start our day with, after coffee? On a nippy December morning at the newly opened Cheffy’s on Cowley Brown Road, we discover it is moringa leaves soup. It arrives piping hot in a terracotta tumbler, warming our insides the minute we take a few sips. It is seasoned with plenty of pepper, and we are tempted to order one more serving. But coconut milk coffee beckons – it is the reason we are here at the ‘coconut café’.

The café is five months old and is a unit of the Anaimalai’s Coconut Producer Company, a Farmer Producer Organisation (FDO) under the Tamil Nadu Government’s Department of Agricultural Marketing & Agri Business.

R Sri Sathyabama, its founder, is on her feet, taking orders and talking to customers; mornings are among their busiest hours. The 40-year-old from Pollachi conceptualised a vegan and organic menu and wants her café to be “unlike the typical tea shops” serving coffee, tea and butter biscuits. At Cheffy’s, coffee is made with coconut milk and organic naatu sakkarai and comes in cold and warm variations.

We try both: the coffee is thick and nutty, and coconut milk imbibes the flavours of decoction and country sugar so well. The result is a refreshing beverage that according to Sathyabama, is loaded with health benefits. Sathyabama worked at a hotel in France as an executive chef and brings 17 years of her experience in the field to concoct recipes with organic ingredients from the various FDOs they are associated with.

For instance, there is a kanji served every morning, made with traditional rice varieties such as kaatuyanam, poongar, and karuppu kavuni. We try the kaatuyanam kanji – it is mild and filling, and Sathyabama says she has a regular clientele walking in just for the kanji for breakfast. “I ensure it has minimal seasoning, using only a few cloves of crushed garlic and jeera,” she explains.

The menu at the café is limited: apart from coconut milk coffee, there is neera (palm nectar), sweet coconut milk seasoned with cardamom and nutmeg, sugarcane juice, vadais, sundal, sweet and kara kozhukattai, soups, paniyarams, thattu vadai sets, kanji, samosas, and bun butter jam.

“The bun-butter-jam is among out best sellers,” says Sathyabama. “We make the jam in-house, using coconut and country sugar, and do not add external colouring agents.” She also makes coconut curd and buttermilk for vegans based on order and is now working on a new menu for January. “We will have a range of millet-based ice-creams, vegan chocolates and fruit juices sweetened with sugarcane juice, apart from soups made with coconut milk,” she adds.