Serving food native to the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Sangeetha Vegetarian Restaurant is one of the UAE’s hidden treasures.
It first opened its doors in the UAE with its Karama branch more than a decade ago. Today, it stands alongside two other branches in Dubai, a couple in Abu Dhabi and one in Sharjah. Cut off from the crowds of Karama and yet centrally located, this South Indian eatery is seldom empty. With a menu ranging from Dh5 to Dh15 and a roster of regulars who visit daily, the restaurant caters to all tastes — idlis, vadas (a different vada every day), dosas, utthapams, upma, puri bhaji, traditional lunch and dinner thalis, sweets and, of course, the much-loved filter coffee. North Indian and Chinese cuisines also feature.
My dining partner and I share a Chettinad mini tiffin (the restaurant’s speciality is cuisine from the Chettinad region, and at Dh14 it’s quite a steal) and aapam with curry (a Chettinad variation — not appam as pronounced in Malayalam). A crispy, dark vada (made of whole urad dal and without the doughnut hole) sits atop a thick and fluffy kal dosa. There’s an idli with a sliver of carrot and two kuzhi paniyaram (crispy fried onion-stuffed savouries), served with sambar, chutneys and a delicious, if a little salty, kara kozhambu (a flavourful sambar).
There’s no doubt the food before us looks different and tastes superior than what we’ve ever eaten by way of food from the south, and this is perhaps because Chettinad really translates to “a community that specialises in cooking”. Chettinad is home to the Chettiars, a prosperous banking and business community, who travelled to South and South East Asia in the early 20th century. This and its unique blend of spices have made Chettinad’s probably the most famous of Tamil Nadu’s regional cuisines.
“Sorry for the generalisation and with all due respect, most north Indians have no idea what Chettinad cuisine is,” says Nanda Gopa Rao, Sangeetha’s Public Relations and Operations Manager and son of one of the four owners. “They’ve eaten chicken Chettinad somewhere and come back with the opinion that all Chettinad food is horribly spicy.”
For a cuisine that is perhaps overlooked in Keralite-happy UAE, Tamil food boasts hordes of fans who flock eateries from the southern state. How would you best describe the difference between food from Kerala and Tamil Nadu? Rao takes a minute and says, “Keralites call their mums amme, while we call ours amma — essentially the same word, with different pronunciations. And that probably explains the relationship between our cuisines.”
