Imagine sitting more than 2,500 km away from a cuisine’s origin and yet experiencing it authentically. That’s what went down at The Thali Tradition’s Thali Thursday, where Delhi experienced a Malayali Meal at Mahabelly.
For the uninitiated, The Thali Tradition is the ultimate chef’s table which is a love letter to a regional cuisine and puts the traditional Indian thali on the front seat. Owned and produced by The Ideas Lab, at the core of all our curated programming is storytelling that is immersive, comprehensive, and contemporary. The second #ThaliThursday, an IP under The Thali Tradition, was held at Mahabelly in Saket, owned and run by Thomas Fenn and Zachariah Jacob.
Mahabelly’s thali is an ode to Malayali Meals—which is Kerala’s working-man’s thali. The restaurant painted the banana leaf with a myriad of colours on the green palette. The duo behind Mahabelly mentions how meals in Cochin include the catch of the day, the duck Kuttanad, and offal in the hills. The two explain how every part of Kerala eats what is locally available, much like the rest of India, so every Malayali Meal is different from the next.
When thinking of a Kerala-style thali, the first thing that comes to mind is the classic sadhya. But a sadhya is always in context with Onam—the official festival of Kerala. Onam commemorates Vamana (the fifth avatar of the Hindu deity Vishnu) and the generous but egotistical daitya King Mahabali. Onam is the celebration of Mahabali’s homecoming to Kerala every year. The Onam sadhya is usually a vegetarian feast with around nine dishes but it may go up to 26 to 28 dishes served on a banana leaf. Fenn, one of the partners at Mahabelly shares that they wanted to put something that wasn’t a sadhya. He believes that it is time to evolve the conversation beyond the sadhya. The best way to enjoy a Malayali Meal? “While individually they are tasty but the joy is pulling a little bit from here and there and asking someone what they think about it. It is the only way to experience Kerala on a plate.” We wholeheartedly agree with this. That’s the magic of a thali in India. Everything tastes good individually but the highlight is when you take three different things in one bite and devour it together.
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Some of the dishes at Mahabelly in the vegetarian Malayali Meal included nellikka uppilittathu (brined gooseberries), omakka cherupayar –raw papaya and green lentils, stir-fried with coconut, potato mezhukkuperatti was Kerala-style stir-fried sot potatoes, inji curry was sweet and sour curried ginger, varutharacha curry was a savoury curry with roasted and ground coconut, and many more dishes. The non-vegetarian Malayali Meal, on the other hand, started with crab rasam with prawn wafers. Other dishes included meen peera, (Kerala-style anchovies in shredded coconut), angamaly pork–a regional specialty pork with Chinese potatoes, the chicken peralan –Kerala-style masala basted chicken, prawns cherulli roast (stir-fried prawns with shallots) and many other dishes. Each Malayali Meal came paired with refreshing pints of Lone Wolf beers.
#ThaliThursdays saw its second edition this month, the concept has been around for a while. In 2018, The Ideas Lab launched a luxurious Thali festival as an ode to regional Indian cuisine. The year after, it was programmed and designed in an empty building in Jor Bagh into the Thali Tradition Bhawan. In both years, the event was sold out within three days. Through our experiential storytelling centred around the thali and love for regional food being at the centre, the team has debunked the myth that a thali cannot appeal to the modern Indian consumer.
Powered by Zomato Live, #ThaliThursdays is a monthly food theatre that shares culinary traditions and stories from different regions of India. It is supposed to be a momentary respite from the universally dreaded question – “What do you want for dinner tonight?”
Take a peak at the experiential meal which was held at Mahabelly in Saket on February 15, 2024.
