A complete Onam fare

pookalam

One of the most important aspects of onam is the traditional onasadya.

To most people living far away from home, sadya — the traditional feast, is something hard to miss. This year, Ente Keralam restaurant has come out with an elaborate onam feast complete with 24 dishes. It’s the smell of coconut oil and girls in settu saris that welcome you to the restaurant.

With colourful muthukudai, pookalam and ottanthullal — a traditional art form — it’s festivities galore.

The sadya started with buttermilk as welcome drink along with kayavaruthathu and sarkaravaratti. In the main course, I opted for red rice, and it reminded me of my grandma’s cooking.

I started relishing my course with the paruppu and ghee with crispy papadam and moved on to sambar, rasam and curd. The erissery, kalan, olan and avial were just like what you eat in your hometown and the pineapple pachadi stood out among the side dishes. It was a feast befitting a king with four varieties of chips,pickles and payasams.

The payasams were a treat with palada, idichu pizhincha payasam, pazha prathaman and paruppu prathaman vying for my attention. I simply loved the pazha prathaman and paruppu prathaman for its original taste.

While helping me to choose and taste the food, chef P R Unnikrishnan Namboodiri, who is also an ayurvedic doctor informed that the fare has no artificial flavour or colour.

He also said that payasams were made in urulis (traditional brass vessels) and fresh ada were made from onangalari to retain its authentic taste. No wonder the small pieces of ada in palada was satin smooth and I couldn’t stop asking for more.

He had brought chakka varattiyathu (jack fruit jam) to make the delicious chakka prathaman all the way from his home town Thrissur.

Still my taste buds craved for the naranga acharu and pazham nurukku, which the chef assured that, were reserved exclusively for the Thiruvonam day.

The restaurant is open for the sadya for lunch and dinner today.