{"id":32344,"date":"2025-07-02T10:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T10:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/32344\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T10:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T10:28:11","slug":"author-prajwal-parajuly-tries-chatti-in-new-york-and-eats-his-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/32344\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Prajwal Parajuly tries Chatti in New York and eats his words"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am often asked what I do when I want Chennai food in New York. I matter-of-factly say I go to Semma \u2014 the best-known Indian restaurant in America \u2014 like getting a table there isn\u2019t an ordeal. In truth, though, I have long dismissed people who live between countries and hanker for one place when they are in another. This applies to those fools who complain about the lack of good pizza in Delhi while they eat at an Indian restaurant in London every third day. Ditto for those craving the perfect filter coffee in San Francisco and then crying about the inauthentic Mexican food in Pune. One of the privileges of actually living between cities is that you don\u2019t have to miss a particular food for too long.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Besides, why would I want to eat Indian food outside India, I have often argued.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All that was, of course, until I started seeing someone who\u00a0has taken it upon herself to convince me that no cuisine can quite measure up to Indian.\u00a0After countless battles about where to eat, especially when we travel, we have come to a compromise. Because my deliciously alliterative name would be well accentuated with a middle initial \u2014 Prajwal P for Pretentious Parajuly \u2014 I have consented to visiting an Indian restaurant abroad only if it has at least a Michelin star.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So, yes, I\u2019ll allow myself to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to one of the seven starred Indian restaurants in London or to the above-mentioned Semma, the lone starred Indian place in New York, all the while feeling smug that I have come out far ahead in the bargain. Sometimes I\u2019ll altruistically make exceptions for non-starred restaurants: Bungalow, Dhamaka and Kanyakumari in New York (fair, good, good). Chutney Mary in London (very good). And the just-opened Chatti in New York, the first foreign foray of Chef Regi of the Kappa Chakka Kandhari fame, which is too young to earn a star.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, I have been a KCK fan for a while. The food that\u2019s served at the Nungambakkam, Chennai, establishment is what your nonagenarian Malayalee grandmother might whip up. Everything I have eaten there \u2014 the lobster fry, the coconut prawn, the duck mappas \u2014 is wholesome. But my relationship with the restaurant is somewhat mangled by the cloud pudding \u2014 that ridiculous, magnificent tender-coconut dome. The blancmange is as light as a cloud, fluffy as a cloud, luminescent as a cloud. It feels like you\u2019re consuming air, if air were filled with whimsy and delight and agar agar. As a novelist, I am wary of PhD theses finding symbolism in my books where there\u2019s none, but I see, after the many times I have intellectualised a damn pudding, how the temptation might arise.\u00a0\u00a0Still, I now realise I\u2019ve done KCK a disservice by being fanatical about the cloud pudding, which is just one exceptional item on a menu bursting with exceptional foods.<\/p>\n

\"Cloud<\/p>\n

\n

Cloud pudding at Chatti in NYC
\n | Photo Credit:
\n Special Arrangement\n <\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019d have to redeem myself at Chatti.<\/p>\n

First, the size hits me. I\u2019ve been told it\u2019s toddy-shop food, so I expect the restaurant to look a bit distressed, down-market even, but the two-storied Chatti is a ritzier iteration of KCK. There are marble tables, teak chairs and conches on every placemat. The 90-seat restaurant, a hop and a skip from the hell that is Times Square, is ambitious all right. Despite its being just four months old, tables are hard to come by. I\u2019d know because I have gone twice in 10 days. The first time, we went as a twosome. Greedy to try out more food, we cobbled together a group of four to return. Getting a Saturday-evening reservation involved some dexterously placed phone calls.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The tablemats show off a mind-boggling array of appetisers; we tell Chef Regi our order is in his hands. Plates of perfectly spiced prawn pouches steamed in banana leaves materialise. These are followed by scallops, mini appams, curry-leaf mushrooms and a slow-simmered seafood moilee soup. I pop in my mouth the flavour bomb that\u2019s the Calicut mussel, seasoned with curry leaves, coconut oil, chilli, coriander powder, turmeric, and lemon juice. It\u2019s sensational. Others are distracted by the Ramapuram chicken curry. Many variations of \u201chomey\u201d are thrown around. The rice dumplings in coconut milk are unlike anything I\u2019ve had before. The overnight-fermented clay pot fish curry is unusual in that it is served at room temperature.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I fall for the black-chickpea kadala curry. It\u2019s so light. The snapper \u2014 spiced with tender peppercorn, gooseberry, Kandhari chilli and turmeric \u2014 makes me want to cry with joy. And there\u2019s ghee rice. How can rice \u2014 rice! \u2014 be so magical? It smells of cardamom and ghee and tastes exactly like it smells.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Chef<\/p>\n

\n

Chef Regi and Prajwal at Chatti
\n | Photo Credit:
\n Special Arrangement\n <\/p>\n

It\u2019s toddy-shop cuisine, so the drinks can\u2019t be far behind. The Malayalee Old-Fashioned \u2014 embellished with toasted coconut, bitters and jaggery \u2014 is theatrically revealed, but it\u2019s the tequila-based Kandhari drink, in which the flavour of the lethal Kandhari chilli has been playfully captured, that does it for me. The clarified sambar drink\u2014appropriately named Sam Bar\u2014is someone else\u2019s favourite.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWill it get a star?\u201d one of us asks. I think it will. It better. This is good, sincere food. It\u2019s quality food. It\u2019s happy food. It\u2019s food that transcends what\u2019s on the plate. It\u2019s food that tells stories.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I am eager for others to experience the dessert, my slice of Chennai, the divine dome of KCK. The cloud pudding \u2014 an eye-wateringly expensive $16 \u2014 pinches me hard because I have eaten it in Chennai for 125 rupees. Our group is divided. Two of us declare the pudding sublime. The other two pronounce the jaggery palada superior. It doesn\u2019t matter. We order another cloud pudding. It\u2019s worth every one of those darn sixteen dollars. The chef sends us yet another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prajwal Parajuly is the author of\u00a0The Gurkha\u2019s Daughter\u00a0and\u00a0Land Where I Flee. He loves idli, loathes naan, and is indifferent to coffee. He teaches Creative Writing at Krea University and\u00a0oscillates between New York City and Sri City.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Published – July 02, 2025 03:30 pm IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I am often asked what I do when I want Chennai food in New York. I matter-of-factly say…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":32345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,27190,27192,27189,27191,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,27188,11800,27187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-32344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-chatti-nyc","10":"tag-indian-food-abroad","11":"tag-indian-restaurants-in-new-york","12":"tag-kappa-chakka-kandhari","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkcity","17":"tag-ny","18":"tag-nyc","19":"tag-prajwal-parajuly-hindu-column","20":"tag-semma","21":"tag-southern-living-column","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114783171578835564","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}