On our last day in Kochi, when an afternoon stroll lands us smack in the middle of 21 gorgeously bedecked elephants, three marching bands, and a Kathakali dance-drama troupe, we can’t help thinking, “Why leave this place?” Only after swearing by all we’ve eaten that we’ll be back do we manage to head for the airport and for Madurai.
“There’s no place to eat in Madurai,” professional food-lovers had assured us. But friends who are penniless academics know a different Madurai. Chasing down their gastronomic tips, we discover a very appealing food town indeed. Since the eighth century, the city has been teeming with Hindu pilgrims who flock to the spectacular Sri Meenakshi Temple, where Siva and his consort, Parvati, preside over a vast, shadowy maze lined with statues of gods and goddesses. Devotees hurry barefoot through the dark halls, bearing coconuts and fruit for the deities, who in return offer prasad—their own food, cooked in the temple and sold to worshipers. The historian has no intention of passing up this food of the gods and insists on buying a rocklike cracker and a crumbly round sweet from the temple’s prasad booth. The cook, who on occasion would have happily scarfed down raw salads and tap water if the historian hadn’t yanked her back, is actually repelled. “You don’t know when that stuff was cooked,” says the cook, unmoved by the historian’s description of a more transcendent cuisine, fresh for eternity. Finally, we both try the prasad. They’re cold, hard, and tasteless but otherwise, according to the historian, perfect.
The academics had been unanimous about Madurai’s star culinary attraction: a chain of three Murugan Idly shops. Idlies and dosas, which both begin with a lightly fermented batter of rice flour and lentils, represent South India’s vegetarian cuisine at its most irresistible. Shaped into oval dumplings and steamed, the batter becomes idlies. Poured on a hot griddle, it becomes large crêpe-like dosas. At Murugan, the batter is a little more sour than most, producing wonderfully moist, soft idlies that keep their character even after being dunked into fresh coconut chutney and a brightly seasoned sambar. As for a crisp, tart Murugan dosa—sometimes brushed with clarified butter—we think it may be the greatest food in the world. Until we taste an uttapam, a smaller, thicker pancake, here slathered with fried shallots. All are served with beautiful simplicity, on banana leaves.
Madurai also boasts what becomes our favorite dive, a place called Konaar Kadai that’s open only at night. When we arrive at 9:30 p.m. men are clustered thickly around a storefront where a cook sits at a grill and women are eating in the backseats of the cars parked all around. Instantly spotted as tourists, we are led up three narrow flights of stairs to a tiny room off the landing. A waiter appears and looks at us inquiringly; all we can think to do is look inquiringly back at him. He disappears, then brings us some dosas that have been torn up and scrambled with egg. This is nice enough, but it’s not until we’re back on the street that we understand why our informants are so excited about the place. Something utterly delicious-smelling is sizzling on the grill; it looks like a thick dosa topped with shredded meat and a fried egg. “Mutton dosa,” says a man who sees us craning our necks for a better view. “That’s it!” cries the cook of the two of us. “That’s what you’re supposed to order here!” Transfixed, she moves through the all-male crowd and points to the dosa. “Parcel?” asks a man assisting the cook. “Yes,” she says, remembering the women eating in cars. “To go.” He wraps the dosa in layers of banana leaf, then newspaper, and ties the package with string. Half an hour later, we unwrap our parcel in the bar of our hotel and order fresh lime sodas. The dosa is still warm and fragrant, and the meat—spice-rubbed mutton, fried and shredded with egg—has sunk comfortably into the soft pancake. We crow with pleasure over the ultimate late-night snack.
In the big, hectic city of Chennai (formerly called Madras), we find some genuinely user-friendly restaurants. Any tourist, for instance, can walk into one of the 14 restaurants of the Saravana Bhavan chain and choose from a huge menu of vegetarian snacks and meals. We can’t stop ordering wadas, fried crisp on the outside and pillowy soft inside, spiced with black pepper and drenched in the creamy, full-flavored yogurt we find all over South India.
Grand Sweets & Snacks is another inviting place that requires no ingenuity to track down: We simply ask a hotel staffer for the best sweets in Chennai. Indian desserts have a terrible reputation among Americans—who think them too sweet, too weird—but the buttery, crumbly squares called Mysore pak and the warm milk dumplings served in cream with almonds and cardamom are sublime.
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