Scroll.In Article On Toddy Shop™!
An Indian chef is giving Las Vegas a taste of Kerala’s toddy shop™ food
With dishes like parotta beef fry and karimeen pollichathu, Hemant Kishore wants to highlight lesser-known Indian food in the US.
From rundown wooden huts with standing room, to concrete structures sparsely furnished with plastic chairs and family portraits on its walls, toddy shops are a ubiquitous part of Kerala’s landscape. Shaaps, or kallu kada as they are known in Malayalam, serve the popular toddy made from the sap of the coconut tree. The shops have food as well, but its singular purpose can often be to aid and abet the consumption of the alcoholic beverage by mostly male patrons. When the insides are on fire from the spice of beef or fish fry, the pungent, milky toddy is the perfect antidote.
This “toddy shop food” was the “first thought that came to mind” when chef Hemant Kishore, who hails from Thiruvananthapuram, had to create a bar menu for a new kitchen space in Las Vegas. “In most American cities you will find North Indian cuisine or an idli or a dosa on the menu,” said Kishore. “People don’t know that there are so many other elements to Indian food and cooking.”