Photo: Suneesh Suresh

In Paragon, it’s an amazing feeling being in the restaurant but it’s even better in the kitchen. Before the food got plated, Chef Roy Pothen led us into the kitchen, and he
got us acquainted with the concoction of ingredients. It suddenly made sense when he said,” One misses the original taste of some meals when unaware of the traditional ingredients.”

Apart from the spices’s rich aroma, texture and shapes, I fell in love with the intricacies of the star-shaped cloves. I was drawn by the glimmer of the pomfret’s lustrous scales, the taste of freshly sliced raw mangoes and the tempting invite of the fiery oiled chillies. As we looked around we spotted the ‘cherattathavi’ and the terracotta
pots. On the fie, kappa was being prepared, and the aroma wafted in a memory of my grandmother’s cooking. I loved the sound of the crackling mustard seeds; it distracted me from the bustle in the mall. The restaurant transposed me to a homely abode, more than that the food took us to a time of tradition. Roy Pothen,“I have
visited a few Illams and old Christian homes to recover recipes that have been lost. “ He has an inquisitive nature to understand how history paved its recipes.
The food was finally ready and he got a few herbs, and let me garnish the dishes. The final touch, and he mentioned, “The tiniest ingredients make the biggest difference. “

He believes food isn’t enjoyed just to appease an appetite but to take us on a course of happiness. No matter how much you travel around the world in the end you will always crave for some naadan food!

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