Tulu Nadu · Western Coastal Strip
The best-known Tulu food outside the region is the vegetarian half of it, because that is the half the Udupi hotels exported. At home the coast eats fish twice a day in season, and the two most characteristic dishes — kori rotti and meen gassi — are both built on the same ground-coconut base.
A soft, unfermented rice crepe, folded twice, eaten with coconut chutney, chicken gassi or jaggery and coconut. The batter is watery enough to be poured rather than spread, and the pan is never oiled after the first dosa.
Wafer-thin, brittle sheets of dry-baked rice rotti broken into a bowl and drowned in chicken gassi, so the rotti softens unevenly and holds both crisp and sodden pieces in the same mouthful. A Bunt household dish that restaurants adopted without changing.
Chicken in a thin red gravy of wet-ground roasted coconut, Byadagi chilli, coriander and tamarind. The base recipe from which most of the region's meat and fish curries are variations.
The Mangalorean fish curry — mackerel, seer or pomfret in the same coconut and Byadagi base, soured with tamarind and finished with a tempering of coconut oil, mustard and curry leaf. Cooked in unglazed clay and better on the second day.
Ladyfish, split and rubbed with chilli paste, pressed into coarse semolina and shallow-fried in coconut oil until the crust shatters. Kane is a soft, bone-heavy fish that would collapse without the rava, which is why the technique exists.
Where to try: Mangaluru's older seafood kitchens, in season from October.
Colocasia leaves layered with a spiced rice-and-tamarind paste, rolled tight, steamed and then sliced and pan-fried. The tamarind is not optional — the raw leaf contains crystals that irritate the throat, and the acid neutralises them.
Steamed balls of coarse rice batter, sometimes with grated coconut and mustard worked in, eaten with coconut chutney or a thin gassi. Breakfast in the ghat foothills more than on the coast.
Soured curd and refined flour batter, left to ferment, dropped by hand into hot oil and served hot with coconut chutney. Sold everywhere in coastal Karnataka as Mangalore bajji; hollow and chewy rather than crisp.
Toor dal with a masala ground fresh from roasted coconut, Byadagi chilli, coriander and fenugreek, with jaggery to round it. It is thicker, sweeter and more aromatic than the tamarind-forward Tamil sambar it is usually confused with, and it is why the sambar served in Udupi hotels across India tastes the way it does.
Idli batter steamed in cups of jackfruit leaf or in cones of screwpine, so the cake takes the shape and the scent of the leaf. Made for festivals and for Nagara Panchami.
Overripe banana worked into a curd-and-flour dough, rested overnight to ferment, then rolled and deep fried into a soft sweet-savoury puri. A use for fruit that would otherwise be thrown away.
Chicken reduced in ghee with a wet Byadagi and tamarind paste until the gravy clings. It began in the lunch homes of Kundapura in the twentieth century and is now the single most copied dish of the region.
Pork cooked slowly with the household's own bafat powder and toddy vinegar, eaten with sanna. Central to Mangalorean Catholic feast cooking and almost unknown outside those households.
Steamed ground-rice cakes raised with palm toddy — spongier and sweeter than an idli, and made for weddings, Christmas and Monti Fest.
A tender green brinjal grown only around Mattu village near Udupi, held under a geographical indication, and cooked in a light coconut and tamarind gravy. Traditionally supplied to the Krishna Matha kitchen.
Three ice creams, jelly, dry fruit and cut fruit layered in a tall glass. The name means a mess or a muddle, which is an honest description, and it is the one dish visitors to Mangaluru are told to order before any other.
Where to try: Ideal Ice Cream, Mangaluru.
Staples
Sweets
Street food
Drinks
The food of Tulu Nadu — signature dishes, staples, sweets, street food and where to eat them. (16)