Celebrated across the country for its brilliant variety of delicacies, Chettinad Cuisine is vibrant, vivid and vivacious in all means. The traditional cuisine of Tamil Nadu’s Chettiar community, Chettinad cuisine has a culinary tradition unlike any other. Mistakenly synonymous very spicy food, in reality, Chettinad cuisine is a complex blend of well-balanced flavors.

The traditional Chettinad cuisine is well known for using a myriad of spices of India like star anise, whole red chilies, fennel seed, cinnamon, cloves, bay leaf, peppercorn, cumin seeds and fenugreek. In Chettinad cuisine, some of the “secret” ingredients are dried flower pods, and kalpasi (black stone flower). The richness of the gravies is increased by addition of tomatoes, coconut, ginger and garlic. Traditionally, the spices were ground using grinding stones helping preserve the intense flavors harbored in these ingredients. Overall, Chettinad cuisine is loaded with distinct aromas and flavors.

One is lucky to eat like a Chettiar, they say in South India- Chettiars say it themselves. They say it because a Chettiar table is a groaning board but also because the cuisine is uncommonly subtle and aromatic, a heritage of Chettiar participation in the centuries-old spice trade, the global import and export of pungent seeds and fruits and barks from places like Cochin and Penang, the Banda Islands, Arab ports in the Straits of Hormuz. To the coconuts and rice and legumes that are staples of South Indian food they added Tellicherry pepper, Ceylon cardamom, Indonesian nutmeg, Madagascar cloves and blue ginger, or galangal, from Laos and Vietnam. So it is Indian at heart but yet truly global.

We welcome you to experience Heritage Tiffin with Fun -Chettinad Tiffun.