Malayalis have carried Kerala’s kitchen with them wherever they’ve settled — and over the last decade, that food has stopped being a diaspora secret. Toddy-shop cooking is turning up in Midtown Manhattan, Malabar biryani is winning global “legendary restaurant” rankings, and Kerala-run kitchens are now fixtures from Nairobi to Melbourne. Here’s a tour of the best of them, starting in Asia and working outward across the map.
Asia
- Paragon (India & UAE)
The reference point for Malabar biryani. Founded in 1939 as a small bakery by Govindan Panhikeyil in Kozhikode, Paragon is now run by his grandson Sumesh Govind and drawsdaily queues for its short-grain rice biryani, served with chammanthi, pickle, and pappadam. In 2023, Taste Atlas ranked it #11 on its list of the 150 most legendary restaurants in the world — a striking result for a regional Indian eatery — and it continues to win honors at home, including a five-star rating at Kerala’s Golden Clove Awards. Its Dubai outposts have carried the same reputation across the Gulf. - Restaurant Chef Pillai (Kerala, India)
Chef Pillai’s restaurants have built a reputation across Kerala for elevated, chef-driven seafood — most famously the signature “Fish Nirvana.” It’s a more polished, plated-fine-dining take on the seafood cooking Kerala is known for, and its expansion to multiple locations across the state reflects how strong the appetite is for that style at home.
Europe
- DOT IN Progressive Kerala Restaurant (Amsterdam, Netherlands)
Recognized as Amsterdam’s first Kerala restaurant, DOT IN sits at IJdok 35 in Amsterdam-Noord, just a short drive from Centraal Station, and has built a reputation for treating Kerala cuisine as a subject for serious, contemporary reinterpretation rather than a fixed tradition. The kitchen leans on Kerala’s coastal repertoire — coconut-milk curries, fresh seafood, and slow-roasted meats — but plates it with a modern, almost European fine-dining sensibility.
Signature dishes include an Alleppey prawns curry simmered in coconut milk with raw mango, a duet of prawns shashlik grilled in two different marinades and finished with a lemon-butter sauce, and a distinctive batter-fried plantain paired with beef roast that pairs sweet and savory in one plate. The wider menu runs to fish molly and fresh Kerala porotta, and the restaurant is open Tuesday to Sunday, 4–10 PM - Tharavadu (Leeds, UK)
Opened in 2014, Tharavadu was the first restaurant in Leeds built entirely around Kerala cooking, with a menu of traditional Syrian Christian recipes and standout seafood —banana-leaf fish curry, Kerala parotta, proper dosas. It’s been featured as a recommended restaurant in the Michelin Guide across multiple years (2015–2021), alongside recognition from the Good Food Guide and The Guardian, and has drawn diners including cricketers Virat Kohli and Sanju Samson. - Quilon (London, UK)
Opened in 1999 inside the Taj St James’ Court hotel, Quilon — named after the old name for Kollam — became the first South Indian restaurant in the world to win a Michelin star, and has held it continuously since 2008. Chef Sriram Aylur’s menu draws on the coastal cuisine of India’s south-west, including lobster pepper-garlic, seafood moilee, and a baked blackcod that reworks a Japanese technique through a Kerala spice profile. It remains the clearest proof that Kerala-rooted cooking can compete at the top tier of global fine dining.
Africa
- Swaad Restaurant (Nairobi, Kenya)
Tucked inside Taarifa Suites on Ojijo Road, Swaad has built a strong local following —reflected in its glowing reviews on Facebook — for full South Indian and Kerala platters: Chicken Chettinadu, mutton pepper fry, and Keralite porotta among the highlights. It’s oneof the more established Indian dining spots in Nairobi’s Westlands area. - Malabar Cafe (Lusaka, Zambia)
Located at Fallsway Arena on Kevin Siwale Road, Malabar Cafe is Lusaka’s go-to for Kerala home cooking — appam, dosa, and fish wrapped and cooked in banana leaf are the dishes reviewers on Trip advisor return for. It’s a rare, well-loved outpost of Kerala cuisine in Zambia. - Udaya Kerala Restaurant (Lagos, Nigeria)
Set in Lagos’s busy Ilupeju district, Udaya is consistently named among the city’s best Indian restaurants for South Indian food. Diners keep coming back for the soft, layered Kerala porotta and a well-regarded beef pepper fry — solid, unfussy cooking for Lagos’s sizeable Malayali community and curious locals alike.
North America
- Chatti by Regi Mathew (New York, NY)
Chatti, which opened in February 2025 just south of Times Square, is chef Regi Mathew’s first US restaurant and a tribute to Kerala’s toddy-shop culture — the communal road side taverns built around fermented palm wine, slow-cooked food, and easy conversation. Mathew, who also runs the acclaimed Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Chennai and Bengaluru, spent years visiting hundreds of toddy shops and home kitchens across Kerala to build the menu, which centers on hand-eaten “touchings” (chile-roasted calamari, toddy-shop beef fry), banana-leaf-wrapped pearl spot fish, and a clay-pot fish curry left to mature overnight. The room leans into Kerala materials — Nilambur teak furniture, laterite stone shipped from Kannur, copper-cut wall murals — and the cocktail list reworks toddy-shop flavors fora Manhattan bar crowd. - Kanyakumari (New York, NY)
A widely praised Flatiron spot known for vibrant coastal seafood, curries, and Kerala-style parottas, Kanyakumari has become one of New York’s go-to addresses for South Indian
coastal cooking beyond the usual dosa-house format. - Kidilum (New York, NY)
Also near Flatiron, Kidilum takes a more modern, stylish approach to bold South Indian and Kerala flavors — part of the same wave that’s made this pocket of Manhattan a genuine destination for the cuisine.
Oceania
- The Royal Peacock (Parkdale, Melbourne, Australia)
Based in the Melbourne suburb of Parkdale, The Royal Peacock has become a genuine destination for Kerala cooking in Australia, with dishes like Kerala beef coconut fry, Malabar fish curry, and Thalasseri chicken dum biryani, alongside puttu with kadala curry, appam, dosas, and pazhampori (banana fritters) served with beef curry. Locals and visiting Malayalis alike frequently describe it as “the real deal” compared with more generic Indian restaurants in the area — a reputation built under chef Thomas’s kitchen.
The bigger picture
Line these twelve up and you get a genuine world tour: a 1939 bakery-turned-legend in Kozhikode, a toddy-shop revival in Midtown Manhattan, a Michelin star in Buckingham Gate, and family-run kitchens keeping the flavors alive from Lusaka to Melbourne. Kerala cuisine doesn’t travel as a single fixed menu — it moves as a set of techniques and a spice vocabulary flexible enough to become a Nairobi neighborhood favorite, a Michelin fixture in London, a progressive Kerala cuisine in Amsterdam or a bar-driven concept in New York, all while still tasting unmistakably like home.
