This is a multi part account of my stay at The Raviz Calicut and The Raviz Resort and Spa Kadavu, in collaboration with Panache, the travel designers.

This post takes you on a culinary trail of the restaurants at The Raviz Resort and Spa Kadavu and around.

The other posts give you a glimpse of the activities that you can indulge in at the resort, as well as the sightseeing options in Calicut.

 

Chef Anoop Kannoth spent a lot of time with me despite his heavy Onam schedule, speaking about their food philosophy. As at all the Raviz properties, the chefs at the Raviz Kadavu too believe in keeping local cuisines alive and making sure that their guests can savor the freshest of ingredients via the dishes of the region.

With a conscious effort to eliminate artificial flavoring and coloring wherever possible, he also tries to focus on keeping the food as natural and healthy as feasible.

This part of Kerala falls under the Malabar area and this cuisine that makes great use of local spices, also bears a touch of the Arabic.

Since they are located just off the highway, their  restaurants attract many walk in diners, apart from their in house guests.

Keraleeyam, the signature restaurant of the Raviz group,  is of course the main restaurant here and this large dining space with its traditional decor also has seating in the charming verandah that overlooks the Chaliyar river, apart from its air conditioned indoors.

It is a real pleasure to dine outdoors gazing at the the river, especially when the weather is kind.

Apart from the a la carte which has local dishes as well as multi cuisine, the Keraleeyam serves buffet meals at breakfast, lunch and dinner and their weekday mini buffets are very popular. Weekends have an enhanced buffet and people come all the way from Calicut city to enjoy the food and ambience.

The other restaurant on the premises is the al fresco Garam which lies beside the amphitheater and specializes in sea food grills.

 

The day I checked into the resort, was the last day of the Onam celebrations so apart from the sadya (the festive meal served on a banana leaf) that I partook of the previous day at The Raviz Calicut, I found myself gazing at yet another food laden leaf … no one says no to multiple sadyas, so complaints there 😀

This was the usual traditional spread with regular ingredients, unlike the earlier all organic one.  Another interesting fact that I learnt was that while sadyas are mostly vegetarian, those in the Malabar cuisine do serve meat or fish and they had this option too.

The  restaurant had a stupendous response during all the days of Onam and the staff commendably managed to cheerfully look after the diners despite the surge in numbers.

At tea time (yes there is a tea time even on festivals 😀 ), they have the interesting replication of a Thattukada which is a food cart commonly found everywhere on the streets of Kerala, selling several variations of  chaya (tea) with local snacks. Malabaris love their tea and their black Sulaimani lemon flavored tea is well known.

The tea was brewed in a large gorgeous brass Samovar and since I do not drink tea, I requested one of the servers to be my hand model and he bravely held up the piping hot glass against the earthy backdrop of the red laterite wall, as I clicked pictures of the quintessential drink 😀

The snack of the day was the Pazham pori, the hard to pronounce but easy to eat banana fritter made from Kerala’s own Nendran variety.

 

Dinner was at the Garam where an impressive range of seafood is showcased on ice, for diners to choose and have grilled with marinades of their choice. Freshness does come at a price though and the seafood is sold at a rate per weight basis.

The grill does not function during monsoons because the catch is limited in that season but knowing that they had a crazy foodie in their midst, they had set up quite a range including lobsters, tiger prawns, pearl spot, red snapper etc and I was urged to indicate my choice.

I had the lobster butter garlic and the tiger prawns were grilled with a spicy masala. Make sure the chef is alert while executing your order because shell fish can toughen up if grilled too long.

The chef insisted that I have some appams with Meen moilee and this was brought all the way from the main kitchen which is at a distance, hence resulting in the appams not retaining their softness. The fish curry was good though.

They tried to entice me with dessert too but I was done for the day 😀

The Garam is also where the chefs conduct cooking demonstrations as a part of the guest’s activities and a strategically installed mirror, acts as a screen to manage the viewing.

 

On my second and last noon, the chef gave me a demo of Mushroom Ulli Theeyal, a semi gravy dish made with a spicy masala of coconut and shallots, cooked in a shiny brass chatti (shallow pan).

My breakfasts here were again regular buffets and I aimed only for the Kerala dishes which they usually have in rotation. On the two mornings that I was at the resort, I had the Puttu and kadala and Pidi and chicken curry.

 

I tried the multi cuisine buffet lunch on the second day and again I stayed close to Kerala with the Travancore fish curry, Vendakka mulakittathu, a ladies finger gravy,  Long beans thoran, a dry stir fry of beans and coconut and Kuruva rice, the indigenous grains with nutritive benefits.  I did not try any of the other North Indian, Continental and Asian dishes.

Just as my visit to the Raviz Ashtamudi came to a cl(aw)ose with crabs 😀 here too I put in my last request for a crab curry and the famous layered Kerala parotta and the chef gladly and ably fulfilled my desire to have a whole wheat adaptation instead of the typical all maida one.

Crabs need to be eaten with all 10 claws (er fingers), so I chose to have this last meal in my room where I could dig in without being judged 😀 And oh I also had my little stash of stuffed mussels that I had brought from my visit to the beach, so I ended my day and stay with this shellfish fest.

For more pictures see My Facebook – The Raviz Resort and Spa Kadavu-Cuisine

Sep 4th-6th, 2017