A chef once told me that I had to be drunk to enjoy his 'Potlam Rice,' that was created for the Saturday Night market! While I've never understood the why and what behind that, I was surprised to see the Toddy Curry festival at Ente Keralam. A cuisine dedicated for the 'Post Alcohol' times? My friend, a seasoned drinker was excited and so went!!!

And he explained the 'science' to me. When I mentioned this quote by a chef, he immediately related to it. He said that the senses are enhanced and at the same time there is a higher tolerance for spice. The waiter who overheard us said that the food during this festival was higher in spice and the chef, who went around the tables asking people if everything was okay, joined in. Having a Kerala link, my friend was eager to get the cuisine of the Toddy shops! The waiter and my friend became buddies and were exchanging notes on how the toddy is so good and how the real ones are now scarce to find and how the food in those shops are excellent. I was listening. And waiting for the food to come!!!

So we started with the cutlets. Just two pieces, loaded with chicken and crisp and spicy. Went down in no time. And the dry beef fry. Simple and nice. Toddy or no toddy, when in Ente Keralam, I will make sure I have their appams and Kerala parottas. So, we got one each and went with the curry from the festival, a super nice spicy chicken gravy. My friend wanted fish and me not being a fish-fan, ended up quite liking it. Two gravies is a little too much for two people, but the drinker was adamant. The appams and parottas were fabulous as they always are. Mr. Drinker was having a moment with the fish gravy. And then he wanted Tapioca biriyani. Glad he ordered that because it was quite yum, though I found it difficult to accept as biriyani in anyway. We finished with a little dessert, I don't know the name of and it wasn't outstanding in anyway......

I thought the food was nice. Mr. Drinker thought the food was fantastic. He was having orgasms.

While I will never understand the post alcohol cuisine, at least I understood my friend's version of the 'science' behind it, and ended up enjoying the food. Meal for two will cost about Rs. 1000 here. This festival is on till the 20th of this month, but the appams and parottas are available throughout the year!!! 

"Wel gome to Vella Maaya," she said with the classic Kerala accent. The guy smiled with a 'first time?' coming right out of him. My eyes were all inside. The courtyard was magical. A place like this could be magical at night, but in broad daylight? It was magical then too. I was walked straight into the lobby space with two nice large sofas and loungers on either side of the entry. The wooden staircase that leads to somewhere equally magical, I suppose, was a treat for the eyes.

The property was still sinking into me. The beautiful lawn. The orchids on the wall of the lawn. The pencil art on the wall on either side of the large door. Everything was magical. The toilets....oh man. The toilets were so inviting, that if you decide to stay and sleep there, you would be forgiven.

The wooden stairs that I thought was leading to some magical place actually led to the master bedroom. It had two large beds. And equipment placed in a way that you can have a full meal on the bed. The table was built onto the bed and it just rolls over to you. After the little tour of the place, we came back to our table. Order was already placed and since it takes a while to paint the food, the tour happens.

Yes, I was talking about a restaurant. What did you think?

Welcome to Villa Maya. Its a villa and maya indeed! Food wasn't restricted by cuisine, but by passion to integrate ancient and modern. This can only be called the Villa Maya cuisine.

 

The dry beef with coconut and mango. Now, both were dry. The beef was dry and the mango and coconut were dry, but when you put them together in your mouth, juices just flow from nowhere. The fact that the waiters explain every dish before they arrive/as they arrive gives you an idea of what to expect and what to do to get the best. You had to eat the beef and the mango coconut together to experience this. Every dish that followed had some tradition to it. The beef was served in jackfruit leaves, which were used as spoons during ancient times. Nice touch.

This was followed by the Spice Box. Derived from spice box, this was a melange of kebabs with just a teeny-weeny hint of different spices in each of the kebabs. From the saunf laced chicken to the saffron laced fish to the mirchi kissed prawns to the cinnamon licked galouti kebabs, this was a spice journey without the spice overpowering the originality of the dish. The slightly dry galouti kebab was the only flaw in the entire meal.

Then came the painter's platter - a platter of paneer done three ways. With chutneys served in little paint bottles, this had the pineapple and mint chutneys (that were also there in the Spice box), but an excellent new chutney, the beetroot chutney. For a non-fan of paneer like me, I could eat that all my life. Soft and succulent, this was by far one of the best paneer I've had in my life.

Then the Puttu with prawns and coconut. Brilliant. The last part of the cooking is done on your table with the sawdust oven and the chef then pushes out the puttu onto your plate. While I was full, I could notice that the puttu was going in without my approval. Flavours were just right and the fish gravy served along with it was a stunner.

Wahtalappam, a Sri Lankan specialty for dessert was a fabulous way to finish the meal. While it was as good as the ones I've had in Sri Lanka, there was a twist here, the cinnamon cream. I thought the dish was a little sweet until I was told to eat it with the cream. Magically, it was balanced.

A lot of places claim that their food is an experience and I've written about some of those places, but not until today have I really experienced the real meaning of the food experience. All 5 senses were involved, there was no cuisine to limit the creativity and there was a touch of elegance, ancient-ness (if that is even a word), modernity and flavour in the perfect balance.

Reservations are recommended during weekends and during lunch and dinner times and they are open 11 am to 11 pm, so early dinner or lunch might be the best way if you don't have a reservation.

The master bedroom I was talking about? That is also a table that is apparently sold out very often. If you're lucky you can experience that sitting on the bed with your legs folded and the table coming to you after you have settled down, but I think I would still prefer the courtyard.

A meal for two costs about Rs. 2500 and for me, it was one of the best meal experiences thus far and it came from Trivandrum!

Sometimes you don't know what you want in a lazy holiday. You want the holiday, but you don't want the stress. Or the planning. Just to lie down. And then to fight the temptation to go around sight seeing. Especially when going with friends after a really really long time. You know the picture that sort of shows how there are a million people during the planning stage, but you end up alone on a holiday? This wasn't exactly like that. 3 couples planned to do nothing.

Our choice was narrowed down to the Gateway Taj at Varkala. Sitting atop a cliff, the rooms give you a fantastic view of both the gardens, the rooms, the cliff and the sea. Since it is on top of a cliff, no two rooms are on the same floor, but a few steps below/above the other. An email to the hotel requesting our rooms to be close to each other was met and off we went.

View from my room

And did nothing really. The hotel is not an activity centre, which sort of worked for us, but there was the little feeling during check out that we should have tried some action sports. There was a fuzzball game which kept us three guys entertained along with the shuttle court. For a property that has only 30 rooms, a tennis court was a surprise. The pool is small and shaped like a cashew nut, so it is for lazing around, not to work out your muscles. The rooms have a nice little balcony and two rooms have an extra space below the balcony. Ask for Room 207!

The best part of the hotel was the spa. Now, I was expecting Taj's JIVA spa, but they did the right thing by going with an Ayurvedic Spa instead of their in-house brand and being in Kerala, it is quite difficult to compete with the experts. The therapist was fantastic and knew what he was doing, while clearly staying away from what he didn't know. When he found out later that I was a wellness doctor myself, he was glad that he did not blabber stuff, something that I am used to hearing from spa therapists around India, who, after finding out my profession, end up in silence or spoiling the spa. Here, there was no such thing and I came out perfectly relaxed.

The walk to the beach is like passing through a little forest. On a single walk path, the six of us toed down the cliff to the road via this beautiful green patch of forest, past a few homes and restaurants. It is a 5-7 min walk, but an interesting one at that. From the road, the beach is about 20 seconds by foot, but there is nothing much about the Papanasam beach. You can do some people watching with a lot of expats practicing yoga or stretching or getting a tan. There are a lot of beach side food huts, but I suggest you hold your hunger.

The interesting part of the beach is the cliff on the opposite side. Its beautiful with sea on one side and the red cliff on the other and my phone's photograph is not going to do any justice. I asked you to hold your hunger because you need to make a 60 feet climb via steep steps up the cliff. Its worth it. At the top, you will reach another beautiful setting. Atop the cliff with views of the sea and a battery of restaurants to choose, each fighting for a better view than the other. I'm guessing the food is the same in most places, but its the view that is the hero here.

Breakfast at the hotel was the only disappointment for us. It is not a great spread and there was nothing from Kerala, really on the menu. The wellness section with a bunch of smoothies and 'health' drinks added a nice touch, but didn't really make up for the average breakfast. What did make it up though was the lunch.

Being inside a hotel for 3 days, you will get bored of the food, so a good idea would be to talk to the chef or manager there, give your budget and ask them to give you a nice lunch/dinner. They will. The chef almost welcomes every guest and goes around to make them happy, so they set up a fabulous meal for us. Every single dish, except maybe the dessert, was excellent. Starting with the mushroom soup, the beautiful sea food platter that followed and the pasta with seer fish. OK, the pasta didn't really go well with the fish and the flavours were rather confusing and didn't seem to marry. The starter platter with tiger prawns, squid and fish was fantastic though. This was followed by Kerala Style Beef preparation that went well with the naan and the Lamb Gravy, Kerala style was excellent. The dessert platter was blah. Room service was excellent and we loved the Nasi Goreng and ended up ordering that two nights to keep the 'spirits' high!!!

To and From the airport takes about an hour and a half, so keep this in mind while flying. All in all, we had a nice relaxing trip and came up fresher than we left Chennai. Our rooms cost us Rs 19950 for three nights in a superior sea facing room, spa starts at Rs 1500 and goes all the way up to 6k, while food is typically a Gateway priced and a meal for two could be about Rs. 1000. The special lunch/dinner can be set up based on your preferences from Rs. 1k per person for an elaborate meal with beef and tiger prawns etc.

While I did a small rant about buffets in my last post, yes, buffets around the city are becoming a set of average food with a lot of variety with ability to eat more, rather than focus on quality. If I had known that the invite to Taj Clubhouse for the Karavalli food festival was a buffet, I would have skipped it. Most certainly!!! And then I would have regretted it! Forever. Granted, buffets are buffets even if it is at the Taj. But when some dishes are stunners, the buffet is more than worth it.

It all started off with the crab. With a nice nut cracker at our disposal, this crab cooked with spices and the shell intact was a stunner! A stunner by a long margin and the probably the second best crab I have had in Chennai, the first being the Stuffed Crab in Shell at Blue Diamond! I don't know what was so good in this crab. Fresh. Check. Flavour. Check. Spices. Check. Fantastic. Check. I could go on and on. For the first time, I had about 4-5 large pieces of crab. My fellow foodie had a similar number, but another foodie missed out. He dismissed that he likes only soft shell crabs. His loss! The vegetarians had a tough time looking at us tearing out crabs. No fork and knife for this. Downright dirty!!!! And so worth it.

I can finish my post here and the visit to this festival will still be worth it, but there was more. The fish in the starters was quite nice too. Then there was some mediocre chicken and more mediocre stuff like in all buffets. And between such dishes came more excellent ones!!!! The Chicken cooked in a coconut gravy. Stunner!!!! It was the perfect accomplice for the idiyappam and the parota. Three each. Same story. Don't know what was so good because I could not deconstruct the dish.  It was flavourful, mild in spice, not heavy on the stomach and like the crab had all the checks in my boxes.

And then more average stuff. Then another stunner. Kadalai Curry. It went well with parota, kerala rice and the neer dosa. My friend was raving about the fish gravy, but I gave it a miss. 3 parotas, 3 idiyappams, 5-6 crabs were enough to make any buffet worth it.

And then another stunner. S. StunnerS. The desserts. The same dessert that was in the Goan Food festival at Hyatt, but a notch better here. The bebinca and dodol, with ice cream. Both, like the rest of the meal, had a home cook touch to it and I had to really control myself from over eating. Already I had to roll to the car!!!!

Karavalli the iconic restaurant at Bangalore and serves food from the Goan, Mangalore and Kerala, essentially, coastal regions of South India!!!! The festival is on till the 27th of September!!!!! Nothing extra for this as its part of the buffet.

Entry to the Resort

So after the one night stand in a boat house at Allepy, we took a cab to Kumarakom. Normally, you could ask your boat to drop you off at Kumarakom, but due to the weather, we had to take the 45 minute cab ride to Waterscapes, our resort. Now, there are some wonderful properties at Kumarakom, but none can parallel the Waterscapes resort, because it captures the essence of Kumarakom beautifully. It is not a fancy cement resort, but a rustic, beautiful and luxurious one! Rooms are built over small backwater canals and most rooms have a couple of hammocks below them as the rooms are all on stilts. Its green green and green all over, sorry, green, brown and blue all around. I am going to let the pictures do the talking for a bit!

There is nothing to do in Kumarakom, really. And therefore a trip to Kumarakom must be to unwind and not to have hectic day trips. A book, some music or just lazing around the pool with food and Ayurvedic Spa is what this place is all about. On the first day, we did nothing much - we went to Taj Kumrakom, right next door for a late lunch and just lazed around in the pool and came back to the room. I love their room service, so we got ourselves some fish n chips and karimeen polichadhu for dinner!

Walk to the bird sanctuary!

Enroute the bird sanctuary!

The next morning, we took a walk to the bird sanctuary, which is located within the campus, but a 40 minute walk right into the forest (forest like, but no animals). The walk is so amazing and green with streams flowing by the side. We had a good mind to hire a local boat and enjoy the streams, but there was a warning against hiring local boats, so we decided to skip it. The bird sanctuary is not as dense as Vedanthangal, but, that takes away nothing! 6 am is the time to go, so we left our room at about 530 and reached the view point at about 615, so we were able to catch the early morning bird viewing.

We came back at about 830 and went for the breakfast - not a big spread, but it had a few Kerala specialties like puttu with kadala curry, fried banana, etc. After breakfast, it was time to catch up with some lost sleep, we we hit the bed and slept till about 11 am and were woken up by a reminder call for our spa appointment at 1130. The spa is a no frills Ayurvedic spa and the Abhyangam (Ayurvedic word for massage) was super nice and relaxing and the steam with the head outside the chamber was quite rustic and enjoyable. After a bath, we had lunch and then at about 530, hit the pool again and came back to the room and yes, room service again.

We had to attend a wedding the next day at Coimbatore, so we took a cab early morning and left Kumarakom, but normally, I would have stayed back and taken the evening train from Kottayam to Chennai! If I was to go to Kumarakom, I would not even consider staying at the fancy places - you can stay at Taj and Zuri in other places, but at Kumarakom, it has to be at Waterscapes.

The damages - the rack rates at Waterscapes are priced between Rs 5500(for the canal view rooms) and Rs 8500 (for the lake view rooms) for a stay in summer and include breakfast. I booked via makemytrip and paid Rs 3300 per night including breakfast for a canal view room as the others were sold out. If you like to have the buffet dinners everyday, then you might as well get the plan with breakfast and lunch/dinner. Taj Kumarakom is right next door and you could have a fancy dinner if you please.

There are so many places to visit in Kerala, but the very thought of Kerala only brings back pictures of backwaters to my mind. Yes, there is Munnar and similar places, but you have those type of places elsewhere - for me, Kerala is quintessentially, backwaters! So, for the second time, I did the same routine and did not regret any of it - Allepy and Kumarakom.

The trip started with the overnight journey on the Allepy Express - left Chennai at 915 PM and was scheduled to reach Allepy at 930 AM. From the words of the houseboat owner -"Saar, dat drain olways late by adleast won over", and so I was prepared for the delay. Took a ride from the station to what they call the 'Starting Point' and was escorted via a small lane into the backwaters where our houseboat was waiting for us. We paid the house boat owner, were introduced to the cook, the boat 'captain' and his assistant and we entered the two bedroom houseboat, all for ourselves. There are many varieties and up to four families can travel together in a houseboat that has 4 rooms! Ours had a spacious 'hall' on the front of the boat, two bedrooms and a kitchen at the back of the boat.

The trip started with some coffee and snacks that the enthusiastic cook served us while he prepared our lunch. This is not a holiday with activity, but one with absolutely nothing to do - just sit back, read a book and enjoy nature going by with soft bumps! It was noon within no time and time for our lunch - a superb home style meal with rice, a gravy, some papads, a poriyal, curd, chicken kothu, and the fish catch of the day - a fried whole fish - all of which were excellent. It was relaxing in the village of my great grand mom (my grand mom lived in Chennai!) and feasting on local foods -bliss!!

Had a short nap and woke up to noise - all the house boats were converging upon a meeting point and people got out for refreshments! Refreshment from what? Well, at times you need a break from doing nothing, don't you? So, you could shop for short eats, chips, drink some tender coconut water or buy the (overpriced) prawns and sea food that your cook will be more than happy to make for you! At about 530 PM, all the house boats come to a halt, no more sailing after 6 PM. Our cook made us some bajjis (fried raw banana) and tea and I was trying to admire the sun setting, but it was difficult! That does not have to spoil your evening, it was just relaxing!!!!

We were lucky to witness a traditional Kerala pot fire festival celebrated by the locals - I have no idea what they were celebrating and they looked at us as if we were prying on their private lives (which we were), but our boatman spoke something to them and they let us watch. They were shouting loudly, dancing around a fire and lots of ladies were sitting with some food in front of them! After about thirty minutes, we walked back to our boat and were served dinner - a rather simple dinner, though. If we had bought sea food, that would have been part of it, but since we did not, we had to settle for a vegetarian dinner. Retired for the night!

We were woken up by birds chirping and spotted some colourful birds on the slush and sides of the backwaters. Our cook, cheerfully, served us breakfast with idlys, chutney, an omelette and cut fruits. It was time to say good bye to our hosts and because of the weather conditions, we were not dropped off at our next destination - Kumarakom, so we had to take a 45 minute cab ride! An account of Kumarakom will be up next, so till then...

The houseboat for one night for two cost us Rs 6500 which includes lunch, tea, dinner and breakfast. A drop off to Kumarkom by the boat will cost an extra Rs 750, but the cab costed us Rs 900, not too much of a difference.