Pop-ups bring Coorg's best flavours forward

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pandi (pork) curry to showcase the region’s diverse flavours and ingredients. Coorg’s cuisine is built around staples such as rice—in forms like kadambuttu (rice dumplings) and akki otti (rice flatbread)—meat (pork, mutton, chicken and fish), and foraged wild vegetables with subtle influences from Mangaluru and Kerala. The popularity of Kodava cuisine has been fuelled by the passion of chefs such as Anjali Ganapathy, founder of Pig Out, a Kodava pop-up kitchen in Bengaluru.

She served Kodava dishes, including mathi meen (sardine) fry, kumbla (pumpkin) curry, pandi curry and gas-gasey paysa (poppy seed pudding), at Australia’s Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in March. Her pop-ups in Bengaluru are built around a variety of ingredients, such as pork, wild mangoes, wild mushrooms and bamboo shoots. Chef Barianda Naren Thimmaiah of Taj Vivanta’s Karavalli points out that Kodava cuisine has a unique advantage when it comes to use of indigenous ingredients.

“We have access to ingredients that are found nowhere else, like kachumpuli (a thick, fruity vinegar)," he says. Thimmaiah, who is originally from Murnad in Kodagu and has lived in Bengaluru for 33 years, says, “We are among the few communities that still follows the traditional practice of foraging seasonally, from baimbale (bamboo shoot) to therme thoppu (fiddlehead leaves)." Thimmaiah has introduced a lesser-known Coorg specialty, koli barthad (fried chicken) on the Karavalli menu. The restaurant has served kaake topp palya (black night shade leaves) and koli (chicken) curry on request.