UAE's Onam Feast: Tradition meets innovation in Restaurant Sadhya

The centre piece of Kerala’s Onam festival is undoubtedly the sadhya, that lavish, multicourse feast that celebrates the best of the year’s harvest. Traditionally presented on a banana leaf, a typical Onasadhya features between 12 and 30 dishes (or more), all built around the principles of Ayurveda, the holistic medical system that originated in India.

Now, however, what you’re served will depend as much on what’s available and on the appetite of the diners to how quickly the home cook got started with her meal prep (and it’s almost always the women of the family doing the cooking).

But the UAE expat unable to get home or afford the time cost – everything must be cooked fresh on the day – tends to rely on a different Onam tradition: restaurant sadhya.

About 1.8 million people living in the UAE are Malayalis, people originally from Kerala, according to NORKA, the non-resident agency for the Indian state’s affairs, as quoted by the Times of India newspaper. Consequently, restaurants, hypermarkets, and even workers’ cafeterias will serve up passable, near-authentic simulacrums of grandma’s classic Onasadhya.

The taste won’t match personal memory, but that hasn’t stopped restaurants from pushing the festive boat out. As Kerala-based researcher Liz Anns Benny wrote in a dissertation last year, the capitalist economy has overpowered Onam’s cultural significance, turning the festival into “a source of profit-making in our shifting consumer culture”.

Avinash Mohan is a longtime Dubai hospitality insider who now runs Rasam by Avinash Mohan in new Dubai. He told Friday how the Onasadhya has evolved. “Onasadhya is a living tradition, so it’s rooted in heritage but it isn’t static,” he says. “We’re seeing influences from other parts of India and chefs are also substituting ingredients to accommodate dietary preferences, such as a millet-based payasam or vegan ghee for an all-vegan sadhya. Payasam is a kind of slow-cooked rice pudding eaten across Southern India.

As consumption patterns have changed, he adds, takeout and office parties around Onam are common now. That also opens the door to non-Malayali diners, so recipes are adjusted accordingly.

The restaurant sadhya has certainly evolved over the years, from what could be called a photocopy of a photocopy to elevated experiences at Michelin-starred restaurants where fresh ingredients are specially flown in.

First, time and tradition. Onam spans 10 days. This year it ends on 5 September, the key day of Thiruvonam and when the Onasadhya is typically served. Most UAE restaurants are focusing promotions around next weekend, although some, like Lallummas in Karama, are also offering it earlier.

Rasam by Avinash Mohan in new Dubai has a 32-dish Onasadhya from Dh49 until 7 September (takeaway and dine-in), created by a specialist guest chef. Accor’s five Dubai Deira and Gold District hotels are serving a 26-dish vegetarian Onam spread through to 30 September, starting at Dh45.

Onasadhya has always been a daytime feast in Kerala. Farmers and their families would gather at midday for the day’s most important meal, after their morning rituals but well in time to digest a heavy meal before returning to the evening’s chores. Without the Onam holiday that is customary in Kerala, workers and officegoers in the UAE must celebrate on weekends – or at dinner, such as at Jamavar in Downtown Dubai.

Perhaps the biggest change is in what’s being placed on your banana leaf and how it is presented.

Vegetables like avocado and broccoli aren’t unusual at Onasadhya anymore, joining earlier novelties such as carrots, peas and even stew, the historian and chef Arun Kumar T.R. writes in his 2024 book, Feast on a Leaf. Meat also makes the occasional appearance at what is often considered an all-vegetarian affair; on September 12 and 13, Karama’s Malabar Tiffin House will serve a non-vegetarian sadhya for Dh60.

Indian restaurants have won Michelin stars reinterpreting and building on the subcontinent’s classics – whether Vineet Bhatia in London or Himanshu Saini at Tresind Studio here in Dubai – so it’s little wonder the trend has bubbled its way to some Onasadhya platters.

Chef Kriti Shetty, founder of catering company Jeeva, specialises in private dining events across the UAE. “These are usually intimate sit-downs or festive gatherings where they want a sadhya that feels traditional but with my modern twist: comforting yet totally unexpected,” she told Friday.

Though Keralite staples may often be part of her menu, she enjoys incorporating techniques and ingredients from elsewhere in India or abroad. She once turned rasam, the fiery tomato consommé, into a ramen-style broth with hand-pulled noodles and ghee-seared prawns. For her avial mille-feuille, she layered the vegetable and coconut curry with crisp pastry and topped it with curry leaf oil. “It was almost like a French dessert gone South Indian,” she says. Another variation of avial added prawns and Mangaluru-style spices.

Or jackfruit payasam, which she turned into a panna cotta topped with caramelised banana brulée and crunchy jackfruit chips.

Shetty’s roots lie in Mangaluru, in Karnataka state, one of Kerala’s neighbours, and she says the flavours of sadhya hew closely to her own. While the two states’ cuisines have several commonalities, leaning into the differences enables her to put innovation on her menus.

“Most often, my clients come to me with a very specific dish they grew up with, something they connect to this festival, and they want to relive that memory in a new way,” she says. “These are the kinds of twists I live for, they carry the nostalgia of Onam but in a way that feels brand new to the world. In fact, the rasam ramen became such a hit that it has found a permanent spot on my soon-to-launch restaurant’s menu.” She expects the restaurant to open in the Downtown Dubai area next January.

She’s not alone. Other foreign appearances at Onasadhya, according to Arun Kumar TR, include the Indian-Chinese stalwart, vegetable manchurian.

But for many, the feast must feature the classics: avial, banana chips, sambhar (lentil and vegetable curry), thoran (finely chopped vegetables with grated coconut), erissery (white pumpkin and cow peas in coconut curry), inji puli (sweet and sour ginger pickle), and parboiled Matta rice.

These are on the menu at restaurants such as Kovalam at Karama’s President Hotel, at Rasam by Avinash Mohan, and at the Accor Dubai Deira and Gold District hotels.

As Mohan explains, most people want authenticity over avant-garde molecular gastronomy. “Onam is an emotionally and culturally loaded festival and people want to root their celebrations to those home flavours,” he says.

Rustamjon Eshkulov, Cluster Executive Chef, Accor Cluster - Dubai Deira & Dubai Gold, agrees. “Dubai thrives on innovation, where culinary artistry often takes the form of foams, deconstructed curries, and frozen desserts. These experiments have their place… yet Onam and the sadhya are about reverence,” he told Friday by e-mail.

There’s room for refinement, he says, so long as the innovation complements rather than overshadows tradition. “For the Malayali diaspora in the UAE, Onasadhya is a homecoming, a memory brought alive on a banana leaf. What matters most is that the feast remains authentic and anchored in heritage,” he says.

But the demand for Shetty’s recipes shows there is a market for inventive sadhya recipes, even if these aren’t yet mainstream. Benny points out how the traditional Onasadhya has been influenced by globalisation. Perhaps the coexistence of both traditional and contemporary choices is only appropriate for our culturally fragmented times.