On Kerala's Obsession With Middle Eastern Food
Kerala’s ties to the Middle East run deep. The most recent manifestation of this connection is the rise of shawarma and mandi restaurants in the state. 24,000 new eateries have opened during the pandemic alone.
Nidhin Sha’s dream of running a restaurant began while he was working in Saudi Arabia. Despite a lack of professional experience, Nidhin was motivated by a desire to popularise Arabic cuisine in his hometown in Kollam, a district in southern Kerala. “At the time, there were no restaurants serving Arabic food in my area. It was something different and I wanted variety. I felt it was a way to capture the attention of the local people,” said Nidhin. He opened his restaurant in 2016.
Unfortunately, with no one to manage the eatery in his absence, Nidhin was forced to shut down a profitable business within a year of its inception. However, he never imagined it becoming the only source of his livelihood just four years later. “I returned to Kerala due to the recession about two years ago (2019). It was then that I decided to restart my business,” said Nidhin. He now runs a food delivery service with an extensive menu, offering traditional Arabic dishes such as shawarma — a flatbread roll filled with a blend of vegetables and grilled pieces of tender meat (chicken or beef), and mandi —a Yemeni rice and meat dish, traditionally cooked in an underground pit, fuelled with charcoal.
In recent years, the state with an estimate of more than 2.5 million its people in the Gulf, witnessed the influx of its expatriate population, particularly from GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries such as Saudi Arabia and UAE. A recession in Dubai together with the implementation of Nitaqat, a scheme introduced by the Saudi government in 2011 to ensure employment of Saudis, heavily impacted the Kerala diaspora in these areas.
Faced with unemployment, immigrants like Nidhin were forced to return and look for other means of livelihood in their country of origin. A large number of them were former restaurant workers in the Gulf, and entered the food industry at home, with knowledge of Arabic cuisine.
Shafeeq, a former restaurant employee in Dubai, began his eatery, Empire Plaza, in Kochi in 2012. In the early days, he tested the Malayali palate with dishes shish tawook — a Lebanese skewered chicken dish marinated with spices, yogurt, lemon, and garlic, and al faham — juicy, tender grilled chicken. “Initially, there wasn’t much demand as most people preferred tandoori chicken. But it has changed. Many people think of it as a healthy option, as it uses less oil. It is becoming very popular nowadays,” said Shafeeq, speaking of the success of the cuisine in Kerala.
Locals have become more accepting of these new flavours, making Arabic favourites such as kabsa — light brown rice cooked in spiced meat broth, and Middle Eastern salads like fattoush, and tabbouleh, deeply embedded in the contemporary foodscape of God’s own country. “Gradually, over the years, people who want to eat something other than the regional food in Kerala have come to choose Arabic food. Now the cuisine is mainstream and restaurants are doing a pretty good job,” said Alex Joseph Gregory, a software engineer from Trivandrum.
Kerala’s connection to the Arabian peninsula dates back to the 7th century when Muslim traders from the Persian Gulf came to the southern coast of Malabar to procure spices. The monsoons delayed the return journey home, and many traders chose to settle in Kerala and marry locals instead. These alliances paved a path for the amalgamation of local and Arabic culinary practices, giving rise to Mappila cuisine.
“They had a close relation with the Arabic world because their husbands or fathers were from those regions. So it’s very natural that you cook based on those particular flavours,” said Tanya Abraham, author of Eating with History: Ancient Trade-Influenced Cuisines of Kerala. “When they (Arabs) travelled, they brought with them the ingredients from their hometowns. These ingredients were used in cooking. Dates, ghee, a lot of mutton, a lot of meat were used. They used the spices available in the Malabar region to cook dishes that were very familiar to the Arabs. They kind of embraced the whole new language, in terms of flavours,” she adds.
Further, Islamic customs practiced by the merchants contributed to the reformation of the local cuisine. “They followed Islam very closely. For example, the fasting, festivals and marriages, each of these celebrations have specific traditions in Arabia, and each day called for specific kinds of food. This was followed here too,” explains Tanya. However, she attributes the current wave of Arabic influence to the entrepreneurial knack of the expatriate population, who migrated to the Middle East following the Gulf boom in the 1960s.
Moideen Kutty Haji owns AlBaik, a popular Arabic restaurant chain in the country. He was one of the earliest pioneers of Arabic cuisine in Kerala, something he came to love during his employment in Saudi Arabia, and opened the restaurant in his hometown, Malappuram, a district in northern Kerala, in 1997. “My Arabic menu at the time consisted of items such as al faham, broasted chicken. I am the first person to bring broasted chicken, and I think it is our chain that first began al faham.”
Looking back, he remembers being apprehensive about mandi, and decided against including it on their menu. Little did he imagine the lightly spiced dish he deemed unsuitable for the Malayali palate, would gain popularity a decade later.
Mandi from AlBaik
Ashraf Ali, a ‘Gulf-returnee’ from Mallapuram, and the owner of Spicy Hut in Kottakkal, promoted mandi, a dish of Yemen origin, as a variant of biryani — a clever marketing strategy, that made mandi the newfangled star in Kerala’s food vocabulary.
“More than 25 percent of local hotels have become Arabic,” says Moideen Kutty. “It is only recently that these dishes became popular in the south of Kerala. First, it was Malabar and now it is everywhere.” He believes that the lack of citizenship privileges in the Gulf is another reason for the spread of Arabic food in the state. “Today we see these Arabic dishes in Kerala only because of Malayalis who went to the Middle East and familiarised themselves with their food and culture. Unlike the Malayalis migrated to the West, those that move to the Middle East are not given citizenship. They have to return at some point,” he said.
However, in an attempt to cater to regional taste buds, the cuisine has struggled to preserve its authenticity. Despite the overall acceptance of the cuisine among the locals, it has not met the expectations of some, especially those who have been part of Kerala’s diaspora in the Gulf. While they enjoy the availability of these dishes, they remain conflicted and slightly disappointed. “When shawarma was launched in Kerala, it was cabbage instead of lettuce. It reflects on how it is completely customised for this market alone. It is not an authentic shawarma — something I grew up eating in the UAE,” said Oneal Sabu, a food writer based out of Fort Kochi, Kerala. “For me, if you call it a roll, it is a good thing. But if you call it Arabic, it is absolutely not.”
Pioneers like Moideen Kutty also have a similar observation. “Initially, I introduced these dishes in the most authentic way possible, but it was not very practical. So, a lot of changes were made and the recipes were tweaked to suit the local palate. A lot of masalas had to be used,” he concedes. “These dishes are Arabic for namesake [sic].”
Undeniably, Arabic food continues to evolve and adapt to accommodate itself in the foodscape of Kerala. As per the Food Safety Department, close to 24,000 Arabic food chains opened in the state during the coronavirus pandemic. These staggering numbers depict the cuisine’s unshakeable place in the community — a breadwinner for many, a whiff of nostalgia for a few, and for others, a window to an untraveled world.
Varsha Sara Babuji is a Saudi raised freelance writer and multimedia journalist based out of Bangalore.
Banner image credit: Dimitrasdishes.com
ALSO ON THE GOYA JOURNAL
