In a quest to conquer South Indian food, he was sent on a journey. A unique journey which spread across 250 villages in 4 different states and lasted 3 long years. His objective was to unearth cuisines which are now lost in a world which moves at such a speed that even the food has become fast. The exotic food which our grandma’s or great grandama’s used to cook, a taste which got lost with the scattering of the family.

Food was not given the same importance as before. South Indian food which was once a luxury for our Raja – Maharaja’s, is now forgotten if not lost. An outsider could connect to only idli – dosa when asked about South Indian food.

Venkatesh and team were sent to debunk this myth. South Indian food, which consists of hundreds of exotic cuisines, was not limited to idli-sambhar-dosa. It was much beyond that and to discover or rather rediscover that taste, is what took 3 years. Venkatesh Bhat, the Corporate Head Chef and CEO at South Indies shares his story, the journey which eventually led to the existence of SouthIndies.

Venkatesh’s journey started when he was working with the Taj Group of Hotels in the early 90’s. Let’s hear it from the man himself.

“4 of us, 2 in each team, were sent to find out the long lost exotic food of South India. The journey was not easy, we went to different villages, stayed with people there and learnt their recipes. The idea was to learn authentic home style recipes, most of which were lost as the joint family system, which prevailed earlier, got lost as generations passed. We stayed in the villages and learnt recipes especially from the elderly and old cooks.

Venkatesh Bhat

The journey was not limited to the villages, we even travelled tribal areas, stayed in tribal huts and even in the forests of Wayanad. There was a lot to learn from each of them. Not only this, we even travelled with some of them, e.g. on boats deep into the sea off the coast of Pondicherry. The boat travel often lasted 3-4 days and in the process we learnt food which was cooked during that travel, on the boat itself with fish dishes being the speciality.

Another phase of learning was the festival specialities. We attended a lot of festivals, weddings and birthday parties, stayed with various communities during their festivals and learnt their specialities. Each and every community taught us different cuisines. In this process we even met and stayed with a lot of celebrities. Sivaji Ganesan, MAM Ramaswamy, Veerappa Moily, Mrs. K.M.Mathew, Akineni Nageswara Rao were some of them.

This was not all, we even researched on the ingredients. Hunting for ingredients and finding their origin was also an uphill task of our research. By the time we were finished we had learnt close to a whopping 3000 different recipes.

We came back to Taj, prepared and presented those dishes to our guests and handpicked dishes which were appreciated. We even took inputs from our guests in order to make the recipes outstanding. Eventually Taj started a new chain with those recipes, the Southern Spice.”

Well that’s only a part of Venkatesh’s story. He has a lot more to share with us but it’s been reserved for the future. Also we will be sharing some of his recipes here, so keep visiting this place and learn some authentic South Indian dishes from the man himself. Have questions ? Ask Venkatesh straightaway, drop into the comments section below.

Last month onwards we started the ‘Carnatic Music Night’ at South Indies. While most of the restaurants are playing the regular movie songs or some popular English numbers, we decided to bring back the dying love for Carnatic Music. It’s a live band, if we may put it that way, which plays on Wednesdays in Indiranagar and on Thursdays in the Infantry Road South Indies.

Well, apart from augmenting the diner’s experience, it adds to our vision of being a channel for promotion of South Indian culture. A few days back News 9 covered our event and this is what they had to say:

For those of you who are new to Carnatic Music, here’s a brief introduction to it :

Carnatic music is considered one of the oldest systems of music in the world. Carnatic music is a very complex system of music that requires much thought, both artistically and technically. The basis of Carnatic music is the system of ragas (melodic scales) and talas (rhythmic cycles). There are seven rhythmic cycles and 72 fundamental ragas. All other ragas are considered to have originated from these. An elaborate pattern exists for identifying these scales, known as the 72 Melakarta Raagas.

Tyagaraja, Muthuswami Dikshitar and Shyama Shastri, the three saint composers of the 19th century, have composed thousands of krithis that remain fresh among musicians and rasikas. The most important specialty of Karnatic music is its highly devotional element. The concept of the compositions are set entirely against a devotional outline. The notes of Carnatic music is “sa-ri-gaa-ma-pa-da-ni”. These are abbreviations of the real names of swaras which are Shadjam, Rishabham, Gandharam, Madhyamam, Panchamam, Dhaivatam and Nishaadam.

Even more interested to know about the Carnatic Music? Read more here.

If you’ve experienced the ‘Carnatic Music Night’ at South Indies, do let us know your views in the comments section below.

We at South Indies will be having the Tam-bram (Tamil Brahmin) Food Festival from today till the 27th of September. Since a lot of people who’ve heard of this were asking what is it all about, we thought we should share the concept behind the event with everybody.

Annam or food is a form of the almighty (annam parabhrahma swaroopam). According to Hindu scriptures, all beings are born and live by food then they ultimately go back to the earth and merge in to become food.
The Brahmins of the south, specifically Tamilnadu (famously called “Tam-brams”) are very particular about how food is treated, cooked and served. Food occupies an important part in the rituals of the tambrams. Food is offered to ancestors during rituals, to Gods during religious ceremonies, to deities in temple, to animals & birds and to the poor. Children are taught not to disrespect food.

The ingredients for cooking were sourced from agricultural land and gardens in the back yards of homes. Tamarind, mango, banana, lime, drumsticks and coconut were grown by the family. The Brahmin family had many generations living under one roof the women were involved in power plays and yet managed to accomplish a great deal in the kitchen.
The importance of vegetables in daily life apart from food can be seen in tamizh proverbs that are in use in daily dialogues as follows.

• The wild son of a family was compared to the snake gourd “kallu kattaadha podalangayum, solly kekaadha pillayum valaraadhu”, (a boy will be indisciplined if he is not taught obedience just like a snake gourd that curls up because a stone was not tied to its end to straighten its growth.)

• A person who was trying to hide the truth in his statements was compared to a person trying to hide a whole ash gourd in a pile of cooked rice on a plate. “Muzhu pooshanikkaya sothulae maraikaide”.

• “Yettu sorakkai karikku udavaa” was said to bring people back to reality. (The bottle gourd in a picture or printed matter was useless as it could not be eaten.)

The different spices played an important role in the dishes, fenugreek as a digestive aid, cumin for its multiple usage, dried legumes and beans as natures tiny capsule of protein, pepper for cold and cough, turmeric as a healer of wounds, in fact every ingredient used in the tambram cuisine ha a purpose that goes beyond taste and texture.

Navratri Food Festival @ South Indies - Oct '08

Last season we celebrated the Navratri Food Festival, this season we celebrate Navratri at the SouthIndies and explore the exotic cuisine of the tambram as our master chef recreates the magic that was experienced only at traditional Tamil Brahmin homes.

Please let us know what you feel regarding this in comments.

Update : You can view a few pics of the festival here.

Update 2 : A few people requested the menu for the festival, we listen to our patrons and hence you can download the menu here.

Vijay Abhimanyu – Vijay is a restless entrepreneur who amazingly manages to find the time to set up and run a business, study business management and chill out, though sometimes, he wishes for 25 hour days. With the entrepreneurial spirit running through his veins (his dad built a successful IT venture and is now a serial entrepreneur), Vijay is all set to built a transparent, ethical, scalable and successful modern enterprise as the managing director of South Indies restaurants private limited.

Vijay spends his day crunching excel worksheets, interacting with his team, shuttling between ideation and execution and occasionally taking a 2-3 minute breather. Vijay has often featured in news articles like in The Hindu, Midday apart from a few others.

Venkatesh Bhat – Venkatesh has spent half his life following his passions and one of them is his passion for south indian food. He spent his early ‘cooking years’ creating magic in the kitchens of Taj Group of Hotels. In his endless search for for authentic flavours, he traveled to over 300 villages across south india and has chronicled over 3000 recipes and is now the master chef and CEO of South Indies.
We will soon be bringing his “3 year journey for the search of authentic food” right at this very place.

South Indies was set up in early 2007, and is probably Bangalore’s only upscale choice for vegetarian food from all over South India. Primarily we concentrated on the food, which of course we still do, but off late we have even started a few other things, like trying out carnatic music on select days, we have been doing a few events and a few festival specials as well. But some of you regular customers missed out on those which we took into account as you didn’t have the information regarding same. Hence we decided to come up with a channel where we could communicate with you. A two way communication channel, which help us spread the word, but more importantly we have setup a place to hear from you.

From our sides, we promise to share information, news and also a few recipes with you, but we expect some commitment from you people as well. Although we try to be at our best all the time but sometimes even we falter, which may be due to various reasons. We would appreciate if you could bring up problems which you might have encountered. We will try to minimize the faults and continuously better our good services. Most importantly don’t forget to tell us our positives, after all they are our assets.

Also we might be offering discount coupons at this place or on our twitter or facebook pages. So make sure that you are here or join our fan page or on twitter to avail special discounts available exclusively to followers.
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