A new restaurant that celebrates the cuisine of Malabar, is now open at Sterling Wayanad and must be on your culinary calendar.
In 1572, German cartographers Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg published their great atlas Civitates Orbis Terrarum, engraving Calicut as one of the world’s grand emporiums. Their vision shows a restless harbour alive with sails, nets, and traders Arab, Chinese, Indian, and European – converging on Malabar’s shores for its “black gold,” pepper. This was no provincial port but a cosmopolitan hub where sea and spice carried cultures across continents.
Half a century earlier, Vasco da Gama’s first expedition in 1498 had broken into this world, bringing Portuguese ships into the Zamorin’s waters. Welcomed at first, mistrust soon followed as ambitions clashed with Arab merchants and local rulers. Art and chronicles recall both the spectacle and the strife-encounters that altered Malabar’s destiny.
On the storied shores of Kerala, where spice once drew Arabs, Portuguese, Dutch, and Chinese to anchor their ships, Malabar cuisine was born – a cuisine that absorbed, adapted, and celebrated. The Malabar carries this legacy forward, not as a museum of recipes, but as a living, breathing fine-dining experience.
Here, flavours are coaxed with patience: meats are roasted till they release a smoky depth; rice is layered with saffron and fried onions until it carries both fragrance and memory, coconut and tamarind are ground by hand into gravies that sing of land and sea. Fish is steamed in banana leaves so it tastes of both earth and ocean, while lentils and greens are simmered gently to honour Ayurveda’s balance. The chefs here are curators of heritage and masters of reinvention, transforming humble traditions into elegant plates.
Read the full story that first appeared in The New Indian Express dated Nov 11, 2025, here:
Leave a Reply