Kerala eats coconut, rice, spice and the sea, and it does all four brilliantly. This is one of India's most distinctive food regions — shaped by centuries of spice trade, by Hindu, Christian, Muslim and Jewish kitchens — and eating your way through it is one of the real pleasures of the trip.
The sadya is Kerala's grand vegetarian feast: a banana leaf laid with rice and a parade of small dishes — avial, sambar, thoran, olan, pickles, pappadam — finished with payasam, the sweet milk-or-jaggery pudding. Eaten with your hand, in the right order, it's a celebration in food form, and worth seeking out even outside festival days.
Kerala does breakfast better than almost anywhere: lacy appams with their soft centres, puttu with kadala curry, idiyappam (string hoppers), all designed to soak up coconut-milk stews and curries. It's gentle, fragrant food that sets up a day of travelling beautifully.
Up north, the Malabar kitchens bring their own magic — the famous Malabar (Thalassery) biryani, rich and delicate at once, plus a whole world of seafood: fish moilee in coconut milk, karimeen (pearl spot) from the backwaters, prawns and mussels done a dozen ways. On the coast, eat what came off the boats that morning.
Coconut is in almost everything — grated, milked, as oil — and Kerala's own spices (pepper, cardamom, clove) built its history. Wash it down with strong South Indian filter coffee, and if the season's right, chase the fruit and the toddy-shop food the locals love.
Kerala is as much a food trip as a scenery trip. On a GoRaahi Kerala journey we make sure the sadya, the appams and the coast's seafood are as much a part of it as the backwaters and the hills.
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