Food review: A taste of tradition at Ente Keralam in Bangalore

Enté Keralam
Old No 12, New No 1,
Ulsoor RoadPrice:
Rs1,200 (Meal for two, without alcohol)
(Credit cards accepted. Valet parking available)

Bangalore might be dotted with plenty of restaurants that cater to those with a penchant of South Indian cuisines, but if you were to come up with names of places that serve the same food in a classier environment, it might get a tad difficult.

Ente Keralam, on Ulsoor Road, is one such place that gives you the ambience of an upmarket restaurant, service of an attentive staff and food that will satisfy you at the end of the meal.

Talking about the food, the restaurant focuses on all the cuisines that happily coexist in Kerala. From Mopilah to Syrian Christian to flavours of the Malabar, the menu, which is slight extensive, will appease all sorts of taste buds.

Pondering on what to go for, over a glass of chilled tender coconut juice topped with coriander, we picked one of the most popular starters from the menu. The Erachi Cutlet — a Syrian Christian specialty. Shaped like a large teardrop, the cutlets come with a beetroot sauce and in five portions, which I found quite odd. Why five, I wondered!

Crumb-fried to perfection, the browned bites taste just right from the inside as well. The beef mince is not a smooth paste but more like roughly chopped and tossed in a few spices and chillies. But it’s not too spicy either. With that, we went with the Karimeen Pollichathu —the grilled pearl spot. This particular fish is Kerala’s pride and joy and the dish has the fish wrapped in banana leaf, after being marinated with tomato and onions and other spices. It doesn’t look like a work of art but sure tastes like one. You can choose the size of the fish as well — with small, medium and large as your options and the small is perfect for two people. The taste is quite simple — it’s somewhere between sweet and spicy and the flavours aren’t overpowering. 

For main course there was only one thing on my mind — appams, even though it wasn’t breakfast time. That with the Aattrachi Mappas — cubes of mutton, cooked with coriander powder in coconut milk, was truly hard to pass up. The appams were near perfect, though we they could have been slightly softer at the inner rim and thinner at the centre, but as for the taste, I had no complaints.

The mutton curry was nothing to look at — you see a creamy, nearly yellow gravy, with loads of onion bits floating around and meat cubes hiding in it. But one bite and you will be smiling — especially if you like your food mild in flavour. The meat was soft and the gravy didn’t leave a nutty aftertaste, disappearing almost immediately as you swallow it.

While the whole country raves about the chilli beef that Kerala is famous for, the amalgamation of various cuisines has enabled many vegetarian dishes to thrive in peace. Most of their festivals (at least in the Hindu community) require vegetarian feasts so there’s a wide array of dishes to choose from that category as well. For instance, the Avial — a mixed vegetable dish that throws in almost all the fresh vegetables that can be paired together. Or go for the Mampazha where skimmed curd is cooked with seasonal tropical fruits and tempered with mustard seeds.

An Indian meal is incomplete with the sweet dish at the end. Try the Eleneer Payasam, a kheer cooked with tender coconut bits that reminds me a lot of the Thai Tub Tim Krob without all the red. And if payasam isn’t your style, ask if they have any of their homemade ice creams available.