South Indian cuisine has made its mark on the global food map. Famed for its excessive use of rice, distinctive blend of spices, and of course, coconut oil, south Indian food has managed to find a spot in the menus of restaurants of international standards such as the Taj and Hilton.
In recent years, dishes that once found its place on every dining table in the southern states have been pushed to the background in a rapidly transforming and westernising society. Dubbed as the “south Indian pancake”, the dosa once formed a staple breakfast of every family. Popular Indian stand-up comedian Kenny Sebastian did an entire piece titled ‘Why Dosa is Amazing’, in which he jokingly refers to dosa as “the South Indian weed”, implying that it was inseparable from south Indian cuisine.
The emergence of fast food chains such as KFC, Domino's Pizza and McDonald's saw the instant shift from fine dining to a fast food eating habit among the middle class families. In recent years, however, the south Indian palate is undergoing a second revolution in eating—a return to fine dining culture. Except this time, its leaning towards English cuisine.
The innumerable cafes, bistros and the small waffle and pancake outlets cropping up in various cities have popularised the cuisine in mainstream food culture. Cafés such as Hole in the Wall and 154 Breakfast Club in Bengaluru, Jonah’s Bistro and The English Tearoom in Chennai and even Kashi in Kochi have made this particularly appealing to the young crowd.
In an attempt to keep people’s interest, fast food chains such as McDonald's had tried to incorporate south Indian elements in their menu with “masala dosa burger”, and some others even attempting dosa waffles! Most of these efforts have failed miserably in giving prominence to Indian dishes.
Classic south Indian breakfasts, however, never truly died in our households nor in the market. Restaurants and ready-to-eat food manufacturers continue to cater traditional Indian food to Indians as well as a majority of foreigners, who would go for lip-smacking masala dosas or soft, fluffy idlies floating in a pool of sambar over American toast!