Places to eat in State of Kerala

The Harbour Restaurant is located on beach Road in Alleppey, Kerala so you can sit & look out the window at the Arabian Sea. The beach opposite is quiet most of the time, it seems, but really comes alive on weekend evenings. Harbour has some nice touches in the decor - it's cute, chic and tasteful. Not passionless like so many Indian restaurants with their horrible white tube lighting. Food was brilliant - seafood platter was a huge portion that included tiger prawns and lovely white fish that's caught across the road! All very cheap. And yes, wine. We actually had wine and lots of Kingfisher beer. Give it a go. Well worth the effort.

I am providing a list of good restaurants in Trivandrum City..
You can check out these while you are there...
Indian Coffee House,Cafe Magnet, Azad Restaurants & Arya Bhavan are few of the must try...

Favorite Dish: Appam & Stew - Cafe Magnet
Masala Dosa & Coffee - Indian Coffee House
South Indian Thali - Arya Bhavan
Mutton Biriyani/Paratta & Mutton Curry - Azad Restaurants
Puttu & Mutton Curry/roast/fry - Hotel Buhari

These are must try in Trivandrum..
Enjoy!

This is a place we call "Hard Rock Cafe' of Trivandrum!! a regular hangout for local musicians and people from all walks of life..
I've been a regular visitor for the past 20yrs.. but I am not yet the senior most!!
A nice place to taste good coffee and 'Masala Dosa' apart from cold coffee and Eggs on Toast and stuff like that...
It was functioning in one of the old colonial mansions by the M.G road, where we could go and have coffee and a cigerette and a chat about anything under the sun!! but the building owner demolished the beautiful bulding and constructed an ugly looking shopping arcade,and the coffee house shifted to the basement!! with all red colour plastic chairs.. it looks like a cafeteria in a hospital!! it lost it's charm.. what a shame!!!
But an Australian Architect Mr. Lawrie Baker, constructed a new building in a very interesting design, a spiral bulding!! next to the Bus terminus where one branch of Indian Coffee House functions which offers at least a part of what it used to..!!! But it is not the same anymore.....

Favorite Dish: Ghee Masala Dosa, they use veg. oil to fry dosa and it tastes very different because of the filling..
Black Coffee :great coffee.. but tell them to bring sugal seperate.. or it may be too sweet..

Cold Coffee

Poori Masala

you could have a Masala Dosa and a coffee, which is filling... for Rs. 20!!!! worth the price anyway!!

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Appam, a fermented rice pancake, is a speciality of the South Indian coastal state of Kerala. It has a soft spongy middle, laced with crispy edges.

Rice powder is mixed with water and yeast, and the batter is left to ferment for 6 hours. The batter is poured into a vessel called appachatti ( the pan like vessel, see picture) and tossed with oil to make a circular appam. It is usually eaten with a side dish made of coconut called chutney, or with sweetened coconut milk. It can also be served with stew, or typically with kadala — a spicy dish made with Bengal Gram.

Favorite Dish: Method

Soak rice for 4 hrs and drain it.Grind this with grated coconut, cooked rice in a mixie.
Put yeast, salt, sugar in boiled water and keep it 1/2 an hr. Then add this to the grinded mixture. Keep the mixture for 8 hrs for fermentation.

When it is ready to use spread the mixture in a non-sticky pan . See that the mixture is spread so that the edge of the appam will be lace structured. Close the pan with the lid and heat it for 2 mts. In the preparation of appam it is only required to cook on one side. Serve hot with potato curry

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Puttu is a culinary specialty in Sri Lanka and Kerala. It is a steamed rice cake which is a favourite breakfast of most Malayalees. It is served with either brown chickpeas cooked in a spicy gravy, papadams and boiled small green lentils, or tiny ripe yellow Kerala plantains. In the highlands there is also a variety of puttu served with paani (the boiled-down syrup from sweet palm toddy) and sweet boiled bananas.

Regular dosa batter is made from lentils and rice blended with water and left to ferment overnight. (The same batter can be used to make idlis.) The lentils and rice can be replaced with highly refined wheat flour to make a maida dosa or semolina for a rava dosa.

A dosa is made by spreading the batter into a thin, circular disc on a flat, preheated pan, where it is fried with a dash of edible oil or ghee until the dosa reaches a golden brown colour. Then the dosa maybe optionally turned over on the pan, and partially fried. The end product is neatly folded and served.

Though considered a breakfast dish, dosas are eaten at other times of day.

The dosa is served with different accompaniments based on regional and personal preferences.

sambar
"wet" chutneys, often coconut chutney — a semi-solid paste usually made of coconut, dhal, green chilies, and mint or cilantro.
"dry" chutney powder created with spices and desiccated coconut.
Indian pickle
In Tamil Nadu, the simplest, most traditional side-dish, which purists swear by, is the dry spice mixture known as milagai podi.
Eating a dosa with chicken or mutton curry is also common among non-vegetarian households in Tamil Nadu.

Favorite Dish: Masala Dosa
A masala dosa is made by stuffing a dosa with a lightly cooked filling of potatoes, fried onions and spices.

One variant of the Masala dosa, the Mysore Masala Dosa, is served with both coconut and onion chutneys. In Bangalore, the masala dosa is usually served with a red chutney applied to its inside surface; this is a peculiarity that lends it a unique taste and is something that is not found elsewhere. In recent times this has caught on in other parts of Karnataka.

Variations on theme

Other types of Dosa are

Egg Dosa : an omelette is spread on the dosa.
Chilli Dosa : some idlly power is spread on the dosa.
Onion Dosa : chopped and sautéd onions are spread on the dosa.
Ghee Dosa : substitute ghee instead of oil while frying dosa.
Butter Dosa : substitute butter instead of oil while frying dosa and a small amount on top of it
while serving.
Roast : Spread dosa thinly and fry till crisp.
Family Roast : Long dosa which can be spread over 2 or 3 feet.

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The idli, also romanized "idly" or "iddly", is made by steaming batter — traditionally made from lentils (specifically black lentils) and rice — into patties, usually two to three inches in diameter, using a mold.

Most often eaten at breakfast or as a snack, idli are usually served in pairs with chutney, sambar, or other accompaniments. Mixtures of crushed dry spices such as milagai podi are the preferred condiment for idlis eaten on the go.

The idli is native to South India and is common to the states of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, as well as being eaten by Tamils in Sri Lanka.

Favorite Dish: To prepare the classic idlis, two parts uncooked rice to one part split black lentil are soaked until they can be ground to a paste in a heavy stone grinding vessel, the attu kal. This paste is allowed to ferment overnight, until about 2-1/2 times its original volume. In the morning, the idli batter is put into the ghee-greased molds of an idli tray or "tree" for steaming. This typically has several metal trays in tiers on a central support, with three or four round indentations per tray. These molds are perforated to allow the idlis to be cooked evenly. The tree holds the trays above the level of boiling water in a pot, and the pot is covered until the idlis are done, in 10-25 minutes, depending on size. The idli's pancake-like cousin is the dosa.

Its not that great but not too bad....you have continental cuisine but more towards the typical kerala food.
The keralite food is cooked in coconut oil, so its different from other oils. My wife being an european loved the oil and we got 2 bottles of organic oil from my dad's place.
The tend to get very spicy sometimes so do let them know if u are sensitive to spice. Kerala being a costal area the main meat is fish...and we have the best freshwater fish too.

Favorite Dish: Well i guess the kerala dessert....