Launch of Veerappan Chicken at a recent food festival in Kozhikode. Launch of Veerappan Chicken at a recent food festival in Kozhikode.

Appam andam vittethe (bamboozled pancakes). Chicken Pottitherichathu (Exploded chicken). Olichu Kalikkana chemmeenkoottam (prawns playing hide and seek). Veerappan Chicken (forest-style chicken fry). Unless you are a Malayali, it might not be a good idea to try pronouncing the names of most of the above mentioned dishes, but that certainly doesn’t mean you can’t try them. In fact, you should. Where? By the end of next month, at Adaminde Chaya Kada (Adam’s tea stall), in Kozhikode, in Kerala, and by June, in Dubai.

Adaminde Chaya Kada began life as a pop-up, in Kozhikode, about a year ago, and it has since then been a regular and popular presence in food festivals in several cities across the state.

Aneez Adam, a London School of Economics grad, is the brain behind Adaminde Chaya Kada. He quit his job at an investment bank abroad a couple of years ago, and set about tweaking old Malabari recipes. Aneez Adam, a London School of Economics grad, is the brain behind Adaminde Chaya Kada. He quit his job at an investment bank abroad a couple of years ago, and set about tweaking old Malabari recipes.

The names behind the dishes are no marketing gimmick, says the upcoming restaurants’ eponymous owner Aneez Adam, but, rather, it is a means to draw people’s attention towards the culinary heritage of Kerala’s Malabar region. It is also, he says, an attempt to update age-old, long forgotten recipes and make them more attractive to the youth.

The Moplah food of Malabar bears the imprimatur of Arab traders, who sailed in and out of Kozhikode long before the birth of Islam, and more recently, the Portuguese and the Dutch who snagged bits of bobs of Malabar for themselves. The aleesa, a wheat and chicken porridge that includes fried brown onion and coconut milk is distinctly Yemeni, with accents of Malabar, and the Mutta Mala, egg garland in Malayalam, and made of egg yolk and sugar, is believed to have been inspired by the Portuguese Fios de ovos.

Chicken Bomb is minced chicken coated with spinach and then deep fried. Chicken Bomb is minced chicken coated with spinach and then deep fried.

Adam, a former investment banker, chucked his job in Dubai to set up Adaminde Chaya kada a couple of years ago, and he prepped for the pop-ups and the upcoming restaurants by experimenting in his kitchen at his ancestral home in Kozhikode.

“Our food is mostly drawn from the recipes that have been handed over the generations in my family, but I have tweaked them and made them cool,” says the 34-year-old London School of Economics grad.

The mutton leg roast and thirilorotti has been a popular combo at Adaminde Chaya Kada’s pop-ups. The thirilorotti is layered steamed rice cake mildly flavoured with spices. The mutton leg roast and thirilorotti has been a popular combo at Adaminde Chaya Kada’s pop-ups. The thirilorotti is layered steamed rice cake mildly flavoured with spices.

So, the Exploded Chicken, slathered with a spicy Malabar masala and then fried in a batter made of wheat flour, is a contemporary update on an age-old Ramzan snack; and the bamboozled appam is eggs mixed with legumes and masala. Plus, the menu at the restaurants, says Adam, will also include a dry-ish beef curry stuff into a tava-fried chapati, a chicken cooked in spinach juices, a Malabar-style satay, over ten different kinds of tea, a variety of porottas and “lots of beef”. “The way I look at it is,” says Adam, “why have KFC when there is a much tastier and wholesome Kerala fried chicken?”

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