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.

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.