CHENNAI: The Chennai music festival season has begun and rasikas have diligently been sabha hopping in a quest for both soul-stirring music and gastronomic indulgence. Here’s a restaurant that’s giving the best of both worlds to anyone who wants to soak in the ragas on and off the plate! City-based restaurant Thaligai is curating a music-food fest, ‘Amudhadhwani’, where in popular renditions of carnatic music, abhangs and classical fusion will be combined with food inspired by the raga of the day.
Abhang and bhajan renditions of Tulsi Das and Swaroop Anand, weaved with namavalis, performed by Savitha Sreeram reverberated as we entered the restaurant. Accompanying the raga of the day — ‘Kamala Manohari’, traditional delicacies like lotus stem pakoda, lotus petal paal payasam and lotus seed soup were served, along with other dishes including Kanchipuram idlies.
“We came up with this idea just three weeks back, as part of our promotional activity for Margazhi. But, we didn’t expect it to become something so unique!” smiled Nalina Kannan, MD, Thaligai. While the idea was to bring the best of music to rasikas, in a restaurant environment, Nalina shares that the idea to combine food to accompany the ragas came just about 10 days before the event flagged off. “Everyone in my family has good knowledge about music. I don’t sing, but I enjoy music. We have a paatu book that belonged to my mother. So, as I was reading through it, I suddenly had an idea — to write our menu on a music string note,” she explained.
The idea kept manifesting and growing into something bigger. “We finally decided to serve food that represented the raga of the day. For instance, the first day was Amrithavarshini raga. So, we made dishes with honey, thenmittai and thinnai ladoo,” she shared.
The rasikas, who were elated, share their experience. “I have always wanted to enjoy classical music. So, I decided to come here. It’s really been an unique experience. Especially with amazing music and food that represents the raga. I haven’t heard of such a concept before,” said Meenakshi Sivasubramaniam.
The recipe of the dishes is passed on from generation to generation and Nalina oversees the cooking process. “Here we don’t have a chief chef...they are all cooks. I give them the recipe and make sure it’s the type of food I would enjoy eating. Such traditional dishes need to be given the recognition and what’s a more apt occasion than this time of the year!” she added.
The week long festival began on December 15 and saw artistes like Nithyasree Mahadevan, K Sathyanarayanan, OS Thyagarajan, CS Sanjeev, Maharajapuram Srinivasana and Ganesh Vishwanathan and Bharath Sundar perform. “The next two days will be based on ragas Keeravani and Navaneedham. Illai adai, morkali and butter roast will be some of the specialities as Valayapatti S Malarvannan, Anuradha Sriram and Sriram Parasuram perform,” she adds.
Amudhadhwani will be on at Thaligai Restaurant until Dec 21, from 6.30pm onwards.
For details and tickets,mail: contact@thaligai.com