Chettinad Food Festival Review

Chettinad Food Festival 2020

Lake View Hotel, Renaissance (Powai, Mumbai)

Until a few weeks back, I had absolutely no clue about the Chettinad cuisine. By the sound of it all, I could imagine was this being a South Indian cuisine. That was correct. So on a one fine Friday evening, I got invited for a food festival organized at the Lake view hotel within the Renaissance along with many other food bloggers.

We all got to sit outside with a splendid view and yes that was totally a 10/10 move when it came to the view but the mosquitoes around made sure I ran inside and finish my meal. Anyway, in generality, the Chettinad food has a lot of masalas, spices, etc and is considered one of the spiciest cuisines in India.

You can read more about it HERE.

I’ll be posting a few pictures now with the names of the dishes (which btw took me a lot of time figuring it out also). The review shall follow after the pictures. This just gives you the outlook of a typical South Indian house kitchen, don’t ya think?

chettinad masala company

Authenticity at it’s best like the chettinad masala company.

chettinad spices

You will be amazed with the itc chettinad chicken masala. It’s one of a kind.

Below will be pictures that shall denote the variety which the hotel chose to offer with the Chettinad cuisine. This move might have been taken with the view of getting the foreigners staying there to try something that they know.

By far, the dishes were well served but the variety of non-Chettinad cuisine was worrying. This is because if you keep a food festival, you keep maximum dishes of the cuisine you’re showcasing. The ratio can be 80-20. Here it looked almost 60-40! The food dishes included Chettinad chicken biryani masala & their famous curry i.e. the chicken Chettinad.

Unique food at Chhetinad festival

The Grilled Fish in creamy pesto sauce was a delight to have. Melted in the mouth, literally.

roasted chicken chettinad

The Roasted chicken was cooked well with the spices and made for an excellent side dish.

chettinad masala curry

To the left, you would find the Palkatti Chettinad which literally had spices alongside cottage cheese. This one didn’t go that well for me. I like paneer and have had better too.

The Mattangai Moru Kolambu was a curd based gravy involving the red pumpkin cooked with yogurt and coconut paste. I liked it.

chettinad curry India

These two were the highlight of the evening for me apart from the Chef’s specials.

To the left was the Venkai Kozhi Kootu was chicken cooked in the most traditional South Indian way with the masala and the onions giving it a spicy flavor.

To the right was the Mutton Chettinad, where there were a lot of coconuts to accompany the lamb and this dish was amazing. You can see how quickly it got over. I could barely make a decision to eat or to click here.

Mutton Chettinad

Here’s presenting the Meen Pal Kolambu, which includes boneless fish pieces cooked in coconut milk. See, coconuts are everywhere in any dish. Well cooked and the taste did make me go for another serving.

Meen Pal Kolambu Chettinad
Image credit – Sanjay Thampy

This was quite an interesting dish. The Vendakai Puriyal had a mixture of ladyfinger with coconut and curry leaves. Quite an interesting concept had to try it.

Chettinad Dessert special

The above 3 pictures were for the dessert lovers like me and here’s where they failed. There was hardly any dessert that was remotely near to the south Indian cuisine. That hurt.

Kuthu Paratha Chettinad

The Kuthu Paratha, one of the chef’s specials where the Malabari Paratha made with refined flour is broken into pieces and added with the coconut-based vegetable stew and mixed with onion, tomato, and capsicum on a Tawa.

I thought while the chef was weaving his magic, that I made a wrong choice and was feeling bad already that this would be wasted by me. But boy after tasting it, I couldn’t agree more; Don’t ever judge a book by its cover.

Kozhi Malligai Chettinad
Image credit – Sanjay Thampy

The next special dish for the day was the Kozhi Malligai, which was an absolute delight. This was a preparation of boneless chicken deep fried and tossed in a thick paste of green chilly, ginger, and garlic, with coriander and coconut and then wrapped in a banana leaf. Just imagine all of that and yes, it tastes good.

Overall I liked the food, the spiciness, and the staff too. There could have been more dishes relating to the cuisine rather than thinking of the crowd and adding the general dishes from other cuisines. But that’s my opinion.

The Lake View restaurant is amazing in terms of the view, the ambiance, and will be higher on the pricing point of view. Food quality is at it’s best. The staff is sincere and cater to your needs. Proximity from Andheri station is far. Almost an hour away including the time spent in traffic. For the ones coming via Ghatkopar, this place will not take long enough to find.

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2 thoughts on “Chettinad Food Festival Review”

  1. The food would taste as good as it is explained here by you. An honest review, especially when it comes to mentioning the things that you missed out in a Chettinad cuisine here.

    Yeah and they do host quite a lot of food festivals here, so its advisable to keep track of these and head out to Powai for some lip smacking gourmet treat once a while.

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