A taste of the south

Running a successful restaurant at the ECR is like racing in the Grand Prix. Few people last the course. There are burn-outs as quality chefs melt down like soufflés when the current fails.
There are flat tyres when customers don’t show up during most of the week and then crowd in for holidays and long weekends, expecting cold beer and crisp white serviettes.And of course, sudden deaths when the staff leaves en masse after being poached by the competition.
It’s been no different at DakshinaChitra, the museum of everyday art and architecture of the south that is just before the Muthukadu creek. Every season seems to produce a new caterer hoping to test the waters, with well-known names providing elegantly-served meals, or desi ones catering to the biryani and bainghan crowd. Finally, they seem to have found a medium-style caterer in Jaya Mathew, whose Bekal restaurant is more lunch home than stylish joint, with affordable meals for the triple generation families who are now beginning to visit DakshinaChitra. The tiled roof restaurant set in an open-pillared veranda, overlooking the tree-lined courtyard on two sides, is where most people like to sit, though there is also an air conditioned hall inside.
We went there on a hectic Sunday afternoon and found that we had to play musical chairs just to get a seat at one of the large family size tables. The maitre d’ however was all over the place offering a choice of a south Indian thali meal or small tray meals of bisibella bath, pillao or curd rice with accompaniments. We asked for rotis and were told that they had run out of them, but we could have a plate of the famous chicken 65. We opted for the thali, which was simple, but well served, with a mound of rice, rasam, sambhar, three kinds of koothu and poriyals, pickle, pappad, a sweet rice dish and curd. Though nothing could be termed as sensational, it was simple south Indian food, served hot and efficiently.
“We hope to introduce the traditional cuisines of the four southern regions,” explained Mathew. There are also plans to create the moveable carts that street vendors use and keep them at different vantage points of DakshinaChitra, so that if you are at the Kerala house, you may have someone making fresh banana chips, or koothu paratha outside the Tamil quarter, coffee and dosas near the Karnataka region, pickles in Telugu country and match the DakshinaChitra motif of celebrating the four states of the south.
Where: DakshinaChitra, Bekal restaurant, ECR.
Rating: 3