DELICIOUSLY SOUTH INDIAN
Flavours of Kerala spices up Kanata
Sarath Mohan, 27, has been a tech worker, a food blogger and a member of the kitchen team at an Indian restaurant in downtown Ottawa. But he has come into his own as the chef at Flavours of Kerala, a 30-seat eatery that opened in late August in a Kanata North mall.
Mohan is not from the South Indian state of Kerala, which is renowned for its distinctive and potently spiced fare. He’s from the city of Hyderabad, 1,000 km to the north. But his souschef Benny Vadakkan and Anil Nair, the restaurant’s owner, are Kerala natives, and between the three of them, they are turning some exceptional and wellcrafted dishes that should please South Indian expats and lovers of bold, complex flavours that set tastebuds thrumming.
Keralite food has a discerning following in Ottawa, thanks to the pioneering efforts and successes of chef Joe Thottungal, who 13 years ago opened Coconut Lagoon on St. Laurent Boulevard. Thottungal began modestly, but his achievements, including a win at last year’s Gold Medal Plates competition in Ottawa and second place at this year’s Canadian Culinary Championships, place him in the top tier of Ottawa chefs.
Nair, previously a co-owner at Kochin Kitchen, a not-quitethree-year-old Keralite restaurant in the ByWard Market, said he opened Flavours of Kerala in Ottawa’s west end in part because he didn’t want to be too close to Coconut Lagoon. (He also wants to woo Kanata’s tech workers at lunchtime.)
My take, after several visits this month to Flavours of Kerala, is that Ottawa is definitely big enough for several high-calibre Keralite restaurants. Indeed, the quality of Mohan’s food is such that east-enders would be justified in making the trip across town to try it.
Flavours of Kerala is small and simply decorated, its grey walls adorned with evocative paintings and curios. Nair takes the lead in the dining room, providing friendly and knowledgeable service. Both he and Mohan, who likes to visit the dining room and solicit feedback, can speak passionately about the eatery’s food, the preparations, the ingredients, and more.
Our first meal at Flavours of Kerala began very well, with onion pakoras (fritters made with chickpea flour) that were crisp, but not oily, loosely clustered and brightly flavoured
with a gingery pop. Chili chicken — moist white-meat nuggets that had been breaded, fried and tossed with a sambal-like sauce — was irresistible. Salt and pepper calamari were spice-perked, cleanly fried and tasty. “Southern scallops” was a successful fusion effort, with properly seared seafood playing nicely with Keralite spices and coconut-milk sauce.
We chose larger, shareable items, all served with rice or fried parotha flatbreads, that ratcheted up the spicy stimulations. We could have ordered milder, more familiar options such as lamb korma or butter chicken, but opted instead for the full Keralite experience. In fact, Mohan told me that he cannot dial down the heat on his dishes, although he can make them more spicy.
We certainly found that the pepper lamb and beef vindaloo didn’t need any extra heat. Both featured tender meat in complex and different mouth-jangling sauces. Palates more accustomed to such incendiary fare could judge better, but we found that the lamb packed a bigger wallop than the beef, which scorched more slowly, with chilies and vinegar leading the charge.
In comparison, “kanthari kozhi,” a signature-dish creation of Nair’s, was practically soothing, with its boneless chicken immersed in a gravy that balanced the punch of green kanthari chilies with coriander and coconut milk.
Another dish that won us over with well-blended, robust flavours was elayil pollichathu, in which boneless salmon (substituted for the more authentic bone-in kingfish) was marinated, slathered with a thick, tomatoey spice paste, wrapped in a banana leaf and grilled.
I was told that Vadakkan is in charge of that dish, as well as the Kerala beef fry, to ensure the authenticity that supports the restaurant’s name. In that intoxicating beef dish, the meat was unsauced, but saturated with spicy flavour and complemented by a heap of browned onions and chunks of coconut.
Vadakkan has also cooked in recent years in Ottawa’s Dosa Inc. food truck, serving the famed South Indian sourdough crepes. Dosa are on Flavours of Kerala’s menu too, especially on Sundays, when an all-you-caneat selection of dosas replaces the regular menu.
Last Sunday, pre-dosa appetizers included fluffy idli (steamed rice-and-lentil cakes that feature in breakfasts in India) and light, clean-tasting vada (fried lentil doughnuts), served with coconut chutney and sambar, a spicy, tangy, vegetable-studded broth.
Then, the deluge of dosas hit our table. Most filling and popular were the masala dosas. Those light, crispy crepes were stuffed with a soft, savoury potato-based filling. Intriguing and enjoyable were the more snack-like dosas bolstered by a layer of egg batter and stuffed with paneer (grated white cheese) or a sharp, bitter chili paste. Our table of dosa neophytes watched experts at other tables eating their crepes with their hands, dipping scraps of them into chutney and sambar.
I don’t know if Nutella dosas are a thing in Kerala, but they are in Kanata, and they were a fine Sunday dessert here.
On other nights, there are several house-made desserts, which top the usually store-bought South Asian sweets at other Indian restaurants. Of them, I’ve only tried Mohan’s madhura katti, which sounds incredibly simple — fry bread in ghee (clarified butter), add sugar syrup and a sauce of boiled, sugared, spiced milk — but is eye-wideningly delicious.
The restaurant is licensed, and stocked with imported beers and even Scotch, which, I was told, Keralite revellers like with their beef fry. Alternately, and especially to assuage burning mouths, there are yogurt-based lassi drinks, both sweet and salty.
Mohan, reflecting on his lack of culinary training, told me that he hopes to attend Le Cordon Bleu Ottawa Culinary Arts Institute to gain some new skills. I wonder, though, if he might also have a few things to teach his peers.
For his part, Nair says that he hopes Mohan will soon be representing Flavours of Kerala in local cooking competitions. I’d advise his rivals not to underestimate him.