Coast to Coast - Mangalore Food Festival

Mangalore cuisine is heavily influenced by south indian cuisine. A majority of dishes has seafood in it, owing to the proximity to thw coasts on both the sides of mangalore. 

The vegetarian dishes are however influenced from Udipi cuisine. I was very curious on what would be on the vegetarian platter. The Coast to Coast food festival happening at The Raintree, Mount Road is best place to check it out. 

A quick chat with Chef Prabakar who is the brain child behind the festival got us some interesting facts like how the spices of Mangalorean cuisine is blended with a chilli called Begdi. It is a spicy chilli which is also used to give color to dish to which it is added. The use of coconut milk and coconut oil gave a hint of the influence from

Kerala cusine. 

 

To start off we were served sweet and savory snacks. A sweet maida biscuit along with rice flour murukus

The soup was a mildly tempered tomato soup along with some Mangalore bonda and Masala vada

The condiments was a wonderful combination of color and taste. Coconut chutney white in color , beetroot chutney dark pink in color , pineapple chutney yellow is color 

When deciding on a spread for lunch or dinner, I usually give equal importance to the  colorfulness of the dishes and their taste. Should say I was pretty impressed with the condiments part

On the non vegetarian starters we had lady fish fry and a mildly spiced south indian chicken fry. Every dish did have a taste of the Mangolorean chilli in it. It blended well with the mildly spiced mutton soup

Neer dosa was so light and soft. You can just about cut it with two fingers. Appam was mildly sweet and tasted awesome with vegetable stew

Thalis are famous in this food festival. The vegetarian thali has two stir fries typical of manglorean style of uppukari and spicy fry. A vegetable briyani which is made with coconut milk and spices sauted in mild coconut oil. Also was a sambhar and spicy eggpant tamarind gravy to go with red rice.  

Non vegetarian thali had gravies of mutton, chicken and fish. Along side with some briyani and curd rice. Both the thalis had dal tempered with ghee and roasted baby potato

Dessert platter had my favorite elaneer payasam. Vannila icecream and a Goan pancake Bibinca. The blend of flavors in bibinca was very nice.  It had egg, butter, coconut milk and little flour along with sugar. It was kind of a layered crepes cut into small pieces. 

The Raintree mount road is having this food festival till 28th of this month.  If you are a foodie this is a definite place to explore and enjoy your food