Best Malayalee restaurants in the town of Bangalore

The best part of living in a potpourri city like Bangalore is that you get to experience the best of all worlds, when it comes to matters of taste. Dotted as it is with umpteen multicuisine restaurants, the city never disappoints the food lover in you. Whether you are the bon vivant who revels in a fine-dining experience, or the cash-strapped foodie, who fights the blues with a good meal, Bangalore is sure to meet your needs.

However, the rapid pace with which restaurants keep mushrooming in the city leaves us confused at times, unable to take a call. Hence, focusing on a particular region might ease things up. So let’s take a look at what the city has in store when it comes to food from God’s own country.

One of the oldest joints serving great Kerala fare is Imperial Hotel on Residency Road. Once the favourite haunt of cash-strapped students and youngsters in search of good food, Imperial now is popular among tourists desiring to have their brush with the local flavour and locals longing to relish some value-for-money grub.

Lunch hour at Imperial takes a look of delicious urgency: succulent kebabs, with rings of raw onions and lime, get polished off in no time, while plates of biriyani with raita are awaited with religious anticipation. However, the dishes that are mostly relished by the regulars are delicacies like brain masala, brain fry and the brain onion special, which to the uninitiated might seem a trifle odious at the first encounter.

Hotel Empire is another place for all that’s Malayalee and has branches all over the city. This is the best place to dig into a lamb raan and other tandoori dishes with an array of different parotas, or try a more filling meal of steamed rice with chicken and fish curries, prawn biriyani, ghee rice and mutton varaval. Open till the wee hours of dawn, Empire finds favour with the IT employees working late or the party animal seeking a post-party hangout. Both Imperial and Empire would however disappoint you if you are planning to wash down your meal with a swig or two.

Good spirits and great grub are sure to whet your appetite at another Malayalee restaurant, the city's very own Koshy’s. Located at St Marks Road, Koshy’s is more of an institution and has served generations of locals and tourists their favourite appams with chicken curry and beef and pork dishes. Other places that serve good Kerala food are Coconut Grove, Kerala Spice, Paramount and Kairali.

Besides housing these well-known restaurants, the city is also dotted with umpteen eateries that in a way pay tribute to the cuisine of the land. Simply known as Kerala Mess, these small joints serve plain and homely Malayalee food at dirt-cheap rates.

So, all set to dig into the taste of Kerala?