When you've opened close to a hundred restaurants, opening the next one should be a cake walk, right? If you're one of the top 10 chefs in India, you should do it with one hand tied. And if it is a cuisine that you grew up on, then is should just magically appear! Well, maybe not.
Chef Reji Mathews spent 3 years doing pop ups of his restaurant, Kappa Chakka Kandhari before finally finding a permanent home for it. And these are no ordinary pop ups. Some of those had crowds of 15k! Oh, and when he did a pop up in Dubai, they fed 24k people. Yes, 24,000.
So what took a man of this calibre, a Mallu himself to set up a Mallu restaurant, this long? Especially, since he is the brain behind an equally good restaurant chain that he started not so long ago? For starters, there is no parotta on the menu. Let that sink in for a few minutes. A Mallu joint with no parotta? How is that possible, you may ask. Which Mallu restaurant will not have parotta and if such a restaurant ever arrives, will it sustain even for a few days?
Well, two weeks ago, I was there on a Saturday. At 3 PM, I had to wait for 35 minutes for a table. On a weekday at 230 PM, the wait was a little less. Just 15 minutes. Yes. A Mallu restaurant without parotta can survive. If the rest of the food is kick ass!
Cooked by Namboodris or traditional Kerala cooks, KCK is a rendition of the Kerala cuisine from the home. And in tapas style. They even has bar style seating! Small portions that don't go waste and priced accordingly. So in every meal, you can taste a lot more dishes that just having parotta and beef fry. Bringing an expansive menu of home style in tapas format is probably what took all the planning and the execution has been perfect.
The Mutton Chukka would be my pick from the menu. It is very hard to put down, and at Rs. 160, very hard to not order even if you're eating it for the millionth time. The stringy beef, Idi Erachi is the other one that is a love or hate dish. Chewy enough to extract the juices out before swallowing it, the flavours stay long after the dish has made its way out of your system. The vattayappam, which for me is a cross between and idly and appam (hoppers) goes with anything from the menu. The stew with the appams then come along to caress your taste buds.
If there is a chink in this armour, it is probably the dessert. When the Kandhari ice cream is available it is fabulous, but that is the only dessert that makes a mark. Maybe home style desserts are not a big deal in Kerala, I don't know!
Did I miss the parotta? Nope. Next week, they are opening the first floor, so I hope the waiting period comes down and a couple of months down the line, Bangalore is opening and I really hope quality doesn't suffer in the expansion. For now, KCK is the boy next door and few know how much work went into making it the boy next door! Our meal for 2 adults and 2 kids cost us Rs. 1350.
Kappa Chakka Kandhari is on Haddows Road, Nungambakkam.
Chef Reji Mathews spent 3 years doing pop ups of his restaurant, Kappa Chakka Kandhari before finally finding a permanent home for it. And these are no ordinary pop ups. Some of those had crowds of 15k! Oh, and when he did a pop up in Dubai, they fed 24k people. Yes, 24,000.
So what took a man of this calibre, a Mallu himself to set up a Mallu restaurant, this long? Especially, since he is the brain behind an equally good restaurant chain that he started not so long ago? For starters, there is no parotta on the menu. Let that sink in for a few minutes. A Mallu joint with no parotta? How is that possible, you may ask. Which Mallu restaurant will not have parotta and if such a restaurant ever arrives, will it sustain even for a few days?
Well, two weeks ago, I was there on a Saturday. At 3 PM, I had to wait for 35 minutes for a table. On a weekday at 230 PM, the wait was a little less. Just 15 minutes. Yes. A Mallu restaurant without parotta can survive. If the rest of the food is kick ass!
Cooked by Namboodris or traditional Kerala cooks, KCK is a rendition of the Kerala cuisine from the home. And in tapas style. They even has bar style seating! Small portions that don't go waste and priced accordingly. So in every meal, you can taste a lot more dishes that just having parotta and beef fry. Bringing an expansive menu of home style in tapas format is probably what took all the planning and the execution has been perfect.
The Mutton Chukka would be my pick from the menu. It is very hard to put down, and at Rs. 160, very hard to not order even if you're eating it for the millionth time. The stringy beef, Idi Erachi is the other one that is a love or hate dish. Chewy enough to extract the juices out before swallowing it, the flavours stay long after the dish has made its way out of your system. The vattayappam, which for me is a cross between and idly and appam (hoppers) goes with anything from the menu. The stew with the appams then come along to caress your taste buds.
If there is a chink in this armour, it is probably the dessert. When the Kandhari ice cream is available it is fabulous, but that is the only dessert that makes a mark. Maybe home style desserts are not a big deal in Kerala, I don't know!
Did I miss the parotta? Nope. Next week, they are opening the first floor, so I hope the waiting period comes down and a couple of months down the line, Bangalore is opening and I really hope quality doesn't suffer in the expansion. For now, KCK is the boy next door and few know how much work went into making it the boy next door! Our meal for 2 adults and 2 kids cost us Rs. 1350.
Kappa Chakka Kandhari is on Haddows Road, Nungambakkam.
