Karnataka Food & Traditional Cuisine

Karnataka has given India two of its most universal foods and holds several distinct regional cuisines.

The Udupi tradition from the coast — strictly vegetarian, developed in temple kitchens — produced the masala dosa and spread across India through a network of restaurants, to the point where a South Indian breakfast anywhere in the country is essentially a Karnataka export. So is filter coffee, brewed in a two-part metal filter and poured between tumbler and bowl to cool and froth it.

The coast cooks with coconut, curry leaf and the day’s fish, in Mangalorean and Tulu styles that use a great deal of red chilli.

North Karnataka is drier and quite different: sorghum flatbreads, pulses, garlic-heavy chutney powders, and in the meat-eating communities some of the fiercest cooking in southern India.

And Mysore contributes a courtly sweet tradition.

Masala dosa is the state’s great export: a fermented rice and lentil crepe, crisped on a griddle, wrapped around spiced potato and served with coconut chutney and sambar. The Bengaluru and Mysore versions are the reference points, and a good one is made to order in about ninety seconds.

Bisi bele bath, a hot lentil and rice dish with vegetables, tamarind and a distinctive spice blend — the name means hot lentil rice and it is a proper meal rather than a side.

Mysore pak, a dense fudge of gram flour, sugar and a great deal of ghee, created in the Mysore palace kitchens.

Ragi mudde, balls of finger millet eaten with a soupy meat or lentil curry, which is the everyday rural food of the southern plateau.

Neer dosa and Mangalorean fish curry on the coast, the dosa thin and lacy and the curry red with coconut and chilli.

Also: jolada rotti with enne gai stuffed aubergine in the north; Coorg pork curry with kachampuli vinegar; and filter coffee everywhere.

Darshinis are the Bengaluru institution: stand-up eateries where you pay at a counter, take a token and eat at waist-high tables in a few minutes. They serve dosa, idli and coffee from early morning, they are everywhere, and they are how the city eats breakfast.

Filter coffee has a ritual: served in a stainless steel tumbler sitting in a wide bowl, poured back and forth from a height to cool and aerate it, and drunk without touching the rim to the lips. Ordering it by two gets you two half-servings, which is how friends drink it.

Coffee estates in Coorg and Chikmagalur receive visitors and explain the shade-grown system; India’s coffee is largely from here.

VV Puram food street in Bengaluru and the night markets of Mangalore.

Thali is served on a banana leaf in the traditional places, eaten with the right hand, and folded toward you at the end to signal you have finished.

Karnataka is India’s second wine state after Maharashtra, and its plateau altitude is the reason.

Nandi Valley north of Bengaluru and the Bijapur area grow vines at around 900 metres, where the elevation moderates tropical heat and the nights are cool. Grover Zampa, founded in 1988 in the Nandi hills with advice from the French oenologist Michel Rolland, is one of India’s oldest serious producers. Cabernet Sauvignon, Shiraz and Viognier are the mainstays, and several estates have tasting rooms within an easy drive of the city.

As in Maharashtra the tropical challenge is that vines want to fruit twice a year; growers prune to force a single winter harvest.

Coffee is the state’s more important drink: Karnataka grows around seventy per cent of India’s coffee, mostly shade-grown arabica and robusta in Coorg, Chikmagalur and Hassan, and the Chikmagalur hills are where coffee was first planted in India in the seventeenth century.

Toddy from palm sap on the coast, and Bengaluru has India’s best craft beer scene.