The previous couple of years have seen the rise of house cooks championing micro-cuisines, and cooks have taken cue and launched pop-ups, regional meals festivals, and extra. Taking cue from this development, city-based Tijouri — a restaurant dedicated to pop-ups — is all set to host a lunch pop-up by Chef Gautam Krishankutty, who earlier helmed standard Cafe Thulp, and The Smoke Company.
Chef Gautam Krishankutty
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Special Arrangement
While Gautam is recognized for his South East Asian choices and experiments with grilled and smoked meat, this pop-up focusses on his flavours from house. Titled The Malabar Feast, the menu, he says, is drawn from his “memory, nostalgia, and the flavours of childhood travels in Kannur, Kerala”.
“Over the past few years, I realised that my connection to my own cuisine of the Malabar coast has been sorely lacking. Since then, I’ve been researching, learning, and making the food of my origins. It almost came about from a sense of shame that I didn’t know enough about the cuisine. This is an effort to correct that,” says Gautam.
Diners can count on dishes such because the trio of chamanthis, neypathal with Leela’s hen curry, velappam with chemmeen ulli theeyal, Malabar parotta with mutta roast, Devisadanam mutton biryani, and porrichi nendra pazham for dessert.
“When I started thinking about the menu, I decided to create a set of five courses: each one a meal by itself. Each of these courses represent the myriad influences on Malabar food, from the Arabic Moppila touches to the toddy tapper Thiyya roots that I come from. Instead of just doing a whole sadhya, I focussed on meals that I looked forward to growing up.”
Chemmeen ulli theeyal and mango pickle
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Special Arrangement
The menu options 5 such dishes, “They are taken from my childhood experiences, my travels to Kerala over the years, and recipes passed down to my mother by her ancestors. These are living breathing records of my ancestry,” he says, including that the chemmeen ulli theeyal is the closest to his coronary heart.
“It’s my favourite mostly because it’s something you don’t see too often on menus, and it represents Kerala to me. It also uses all the spices and produce Kerala is famous for.”
On April 26 and 27, for lunch. ₹3,000 per particular person. Tijouri is at No 1, Radisson Blu Atria, Race Course Road, Bengaluru.
Published – April 21, 2025 10:29 am IST
