You might have to wait till the weekend for this feast, but the food served at Coorg the restaurant comes very close to the fare that might be cooked out a of a home kitchen

You might have to wait till the weekend for this feast, but the food served at Coorg the restaurant comes very close to the fare that might be cooked out a of a home kitchen

During the 80's a student of St Joseph's college started writing freelance articles on formula one racing for the Sunday MiD DAY to earn a buck or two and also to sustain his crazy obsession about sports. Whatever he would earn, he would spend on buying copies of his favourite magazine Sportsweek (now defunct).

Coorg
Food: homestyle
Service: attentive
Ambience: quirky

A Coorgie Spread u00a0Pics/ Sanjay MD

Though the association with MiD DAY might have ended somewhere along the line, KC Aiyappa has not given up his dream of doing something other than tending and working on coffee plantation, a staple Coorgie profession for the last decade.

A year back, Aiyappa decided to turn his Indiranagar home's terrace into a little Coorgie joint and started serving up a simple buffet for those who craved a taste of food from back home in Coorg. The buffet (Rs 275 plus taxes) is served only for dinner during the weekend and also extends to Fridays.

After you have ended up trudging three flights up all the way to the terrace, you will be greeted into a bamboo adorned space with Janice Joplin shrieking from the speakers and you will get transported instantly to a beachside-like shack.

Coorg is stamped all over the place with a wall dedicated to the culture, flora and fauna of this hill station in the form of pictures and coffee table books. Coffee beans in jars adorn the walls as decoration, along with some old fish traps, a device that squeezes out rice noodles, sepia toned photographs of coffee planters and other paraphernalia that will remind you of the region.

The highlight of the eatery though is a long board that notes down theu00a0 family names of people from Coorg. Currently, the record shows about 600 odd families that have visited the restaurant in a year.

We headed straight to the buffet that offers both vegetarian and non vegetarian Coorgie dishes. We started off with noolputtu or string hoppers, rice noodles shaped into a mound and steamed. We teamed up the noolputtu with a chicken curry.

The Coorgie chicken curry was thickened with poppy paste and coconut and had a lovely aftertaste of cinnamon. While the chicken was mild and was perfect for moping up with the hoppers, it was the pandi or pork curry, we were waiting for eagerly. But we decided to keep the suspense going on by opting for the mushroom curry and the daal first.

Hot Akki rotis were served on our tables as we went through the first course of the meal. Though the vegetarian fare was nice, it was the dry fried jackfruit that found favour with us. The jackfruit had been shredded and tempered with mustard and curry leaves and fried with spices.

The pandi curry was almost blackened by the addition of the Kochampulli, a tarty fruit that grows in the wild in Coorg and adds that tangy flavour to the otherwise immensely spicy curry. The pork was tender on the bone and fat had melted to just the right consistency and it went splendidly with rice soaked up with ghee, caramelised onions and cashewnuts.

The buffet also offers salads, raita and some interesting chutneys which we didn't care for much thanks to the pandi curry. We finished our meal with caramel custard which reminded us of our mother's cooking. It was sweet without being overpoweringly so and came flecked with nuts.

While we have had some outstanding Coorgie food in the city, what might draw people to food served in Coorg is the fact that it is free of frills and greasiness of a restaurant offering and will exactly make you feel satiated after a good home cooked meal.

At: 477, Krishna Temple Road, 1st Stage, Indiranagar
On: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, 7.30 pm onwards for dinner
Call: 98454 93688
Meal for two: Rs 650

Coorg didn't know we were there. The Guide reviews anonymously and pays for meals.