Dishes

Coconut fish curryNon-vegetarianMain

Snapper, grouper, kingfish or tuna in coconut milk with chilli, turmeric and tamarind or lime. The islands' common dish, arrived at independently by households from three different mainland traditions.

Shorshe maach, Andaman versionNon-vegetarianMain

Fish in a ground-mustard and green-chilli paste, cooked in mustard oil. The technique is East Bengal's; the fish is whatever the Junglighat jetty landed that morning, which is a saltwater fish the technique was not written for.

Meen kuzhambu, Andaman versionNon-vegetarianMain

The Tamil tamarind fish curry — curry leaf, mustard seed, tamarind, plenty of chilli — cooked in settler households of Tamil and Telugu origin. Set beside the Bengali dish it makes the islands' two-strand kitchen immediately legible.

Crab curryNon-vegetarianMain

Mud crab from the mangrove creeks, cooked either in coconut milk or in a thick chilli-and-tomato masala. The creeks are the crab's habitat and the reason the dish belongs here rather than being borrowed.

Fried fishNon-vegetarianEveryday

Steaks or whole fish rubbed with turmeric, chilli and salt and shallow-fried. What most households actually eat most nights, and the format in which unfamiliar reef species get used up.

Prawn and squid preparationsNon-vegetarianMain

Coconut-milk prawn curries, dry-fried squid with onion and chilli. Squid is a relatively recent commercial catch here and has moved into the home kitchen from the market rather than the other way round.

Shutki — dried fishNon-vegetarianSide

Salted and dried fish pounded with chilli, onion and mustard oil, or cooked with vegetables. A Bengali settler staple, monsoon insurance, and the strongest-smelling thing in any island kitchen.

Pork with bamboo shootNon-vegetarianMain

Cooked in the Karen villages around Mayabunder and in Chota Nagpur Adivasi settlements — pork slow-cooked with fermented or fresh bamboo shoot and chilli. It is the clearest culinary marker of the islands' Burmese and Adivasi populations.

Rice and leaf-wrapped preparationsVegetarian and non-vegetarianEveryday

Rice-flour dumplings and leaf-wrapped steamed items made in Chota Nagpur Adivasi households, kept up as festival and household food since the community arrived from the Ranchi region a century ago.

Idli, dosa and filter coffeeVegetarianBreakfast

The Tamil breakfast, which is what Port Blair actually eats in the morning. It arrived with the colonisation-scheme families and became the town's default breakfast rather than one community's.

Where to try: Aberdeen Bazaar and the streets around it, Port Blair.

Grilled lobster and tandoori fishNon-vegetarianMain

The tourist-era dish, cooked at the beach shacks of Swaraj Dweep and the Port Blair restaurants. Honest to name as such — it is thirty years old, not a hundred and fifty, and it is very good.

Coconut water and tender coconutVegetarianEveryday

Sold everywhere and drunk constantly. On an island where the water supply is rain-dependent this is a practical drink as much as a pleasant one.

Andaman Karen Musley riceVegetarianStaple

A rice landrace grown by the Karen community, registered as a geographical indication in December 2024 — the first formal recognition of anything the islands' settler agriculture produced.