I've been thinking about this for a very long time — to write a note on the different cuisines across Tamil Nadu, my observations, the common patterns, and also like where would they come from? What's the range or the variety in each region? Based on what I've tasted, what I've tried, what I've cooked, and what I've observed — I just wanted to put it all together in one place. Kind of a reference, and kind of to flaunt that, like, okay, we have this view.

So, before getting into it, let's say how we can divide this food map of Tamil Nadu into different regions.

The North

Let's take it from the top. The north can be, say, from Tiruvallur to Kallakurichi, Villupuram, and in the northwest, till Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri. It's not like very deterministic borders — there's fuzziness. For example, you can still find common things between Dharmapuri and Salem. I just put Salem in the west and Dharmapuri in the north, right? It's quite a political map also, but that's fine.

In North TN, the prominent cuisines are, number one, the Arcot cuisine. Arcot has Nawabs and Arcot has a very dense population of Mudaliars. The influence of the prominent flavors comes from the Arcot Nawabs — the Muslim cuisine around Vellore, Vaniyambadi, and the old Arcot districts. Other than that, the typical staple or the very common celebratory things are like chicken, mutton, fish here and there. But I don't really see other prominent things than the Nawabi influence and the Arcot Mudaliars.

And around Chennai — Chennai is like a mix of multiple things. The influence from the Telugu mess, the Naidu families, the Telugu residents. Even Vellore and North Arcot have Telugu communities. And the Brahmin communities, the Anglo-Indians, and a lot of influence from the fishermen — how they make their fish curries. And the paya. Because Chennai has this intersection, this fusion of multiple segments of people — fishermen, Muslims, Telugu communities — and that gave very distinct things. And also the Brahmins in Mylapore, Triplicane, across the old Madras, brought distinct versions of sambar, and the Agrahara recipes. The paya, vadakari, and the biryani — the Madras biryani is quite different from what you see in the Arcot regions.

Even within Arcot, the current Arcot biryani is quite different from the Vaniyambadi and Ambur biryanis. And that's like a mutation, or kind of an individual's impact, right?

This is something I want to highlight. You can see two major things when it comes to food. One is the common pattern — the common identity of food in that particular region. And another one is because of an individual's or a very specific group's effort, something becomes popular. For example, Chicken 65, or the Arcot biryani, or the Vaniyambadi and Ambur biryanis — these are inventions, recipes from maybe one or two families, and they became a hit and everyone started doing it. Whereas the fish curries or the paya seem to be very common among Muslim and fishermen communities. They're still very popular among them only. I don't really see anybody else makes it very good. Same goes for the veg meals of the Naidu or the Andhra mess and other vegetarian outlets around Chennai. It's like shared recipes across kitchens.

One thing I've specifically seen — the Brahminical recipes, the recipes from upper caste households or Agraharams, are quite constant across north to south. Even if you take how an Iyengar house makes rasam or porcha kootu — even the term porcha kootu, I haven't heard that from any other households. It's mostly Brahmin households. Take it from Kanchipuram, Chennai, and go to similar households in Kadayanallur or Tenkasi or Kallidaikurichi — you'd find tens and twenties of recipes that are very constant and quite common in their list. You cannot see that in many other segments.

Even in the Muslim community, I've seen that many recipes are not common across, because they're coming from different regions and influences. For example, in the south, Muslims who don't speak much Urdu have a different cuisine, a different way of cooking, compared to the Arcot-side Muslims who speak Urdu. In the southern part, the Muslims have much more than biryani. They have anams — coconut-based, thick curries. Koli anam, kheda anam, aatukari anam, kari anam. And those anam recipes don't exist in the North Arcot region Muslims at all.

So yeah, that's the North — prominent for Arcot Nawabs, Muslims, fishermen, Andhra settlements, Agrahara recipes, and Arcot Mudaliars.

The Delta

If we reach the Delta — from Trichy to, say, the Nagapattinam side — one common thing is that the Kaveri Delta, in the Sangam era and even in the medieval era, was filled with kingdoms. The Chola kingdom. And the majority, the privileged ones, were the Brahmins. So the vegetarian food across the Delta is quite constant.

The Thanjavur Maratha kingdom brought a lot of things — sambar, pitla. These two are a huge influence. Maratha cuisine influence. And the Delta has very unique recipes on fish curries because they used to get fish from the riverside. There's the snakehead murrel fish curry — viral meen kulambu kind of thing.

The Delta also has a lot of Muslim settlements — Adirampattinam, Nagapattinam, and Thiruvarur regions. And the Saiva Vellalars, the Karkathars, the Pillaimar community across Pattukkottai, Thiruvarur, Peravurani, Trichy, Thanjavur — they have a very subtle influence towards kootu, adai, avial, and even goods like pongal. These are very constant recipes, very prominent across this region.

The fish and the military hotels are quite common in Thanjavur regions. And communities like Mutharaiyar, Kallar — the ceremonial meals in these communities used to always be filled with non-vegetarian things. Different mutton and chicken varieties. But still, I'd connect the Delta more to the Muslim non-vegetarian — especially the mutton stew or mutton kurma kind of recipes — and the vegetarian side of avial, kootu, and such things.

One thing about this region — the royal presence has always been there. And the trade, the external influence. Marathas, the Thanjavur Nayakas, the Nagarathars. Even in Sangam literature, the Nagarathars used to live in Nagapattinam and Thanjavur regions. Kannagi and Kovalan — they're all around Kaveripoompattinam and Nagapattinam, because that's where the primary port was for trade with Southeast Asia.

So one thing is very clear from medieval to contemporary times — how new food comes from two things. One is social status. Whether they were kings or very proximate to kings, they had the privilege, the ability to get a lot of staples, cereals, vegetables. And another is external influence — Marathas, Nayakars, Nagarathars, the Muslims, the very early Dutch settlements around Tarangambadi. Subtle influences that need to be studied. I'm just trying to put out some assumptions along with the observations.

Also, in the Delta, there were a lot of bigger land-owning families with taste. Not just land-owning communities — communities with taste. Brahmins, Udaiyars, Vellalars, Kallars, Mutharaiyars — all very prominent land-owning communities. They always had bigger celebrations, bigger functions, bigger ceremonies — kalyanam and other things. So seeing food as celebratory has always been there in this region.

The coastal Muslim settlements — from Adirampattinam onwards — have non-vegetarian things beyond biryani. Neichoru, kariyanam, koliyanam, anjikari or kalari kari. And Mayiladuthurai, Thanjavur, Kumbakonam — these are very strong bases for Tamil Brahmins with very specific tiffin items. Standardized recipes of adai, avial, pongal, and a lot of snacks — Ashoka halwa, kara sev, kara boondi. These are very common in the Delta. Even in functions, Ashoka halwa used to be the prominent one. Even in areas like Musiri, Thottiyam — people have similar varieties.

And biryani — still in the Delta side, it's very much seeraga samba based. I rarely see basmati rice biryani. Also, the Muslims here are more into anams and neichoru than the typical biryanis.

The South

The South is very rich in terms of cuisines and food varieties. If we take different ranges —

Madurai has all sorts of food varieties. Full-core non-vegetarian things — mutton chukka, kari dosai, seeraga samba biryani, and thalcha. The thalcha is something you may not see in North Tamil Nadu prominently, but in the south and the coastal Muslim side, they make this thalcha — bone marrow with dal, kathirikai, and other things. People say the Dindigul and Vathalakundu kathirikai is specifically good for kootu, thalcha, and such preparations.

Madurai also has Saurashtras. They're very good at making variety rices — puliyodharai (they call it puli pongal), thakkali rice, tomato bath or tomato pongal. Very good at tiffin items as well. Just like how Brahmin households have a very constant range of recipes, Saurashtra households have their own very constant set that you can see across places.

Dindigul biryani — this must be the influence from the Mysore Sultans. If you map across the old Mysore or nearby old Mysore areas, the Dindigul biryani, even the biryanis across western Tamil Nadu — Pollachi, Erode, Coimbatore side — used to be made with seeraga samba and slightly overcooked. You can map it with Mysore's donne biryani or the pulao in Karnataka. The old Mysore region has a common pattern in biryani-making. No sort of Hyderabadi touch, no Madras Muslim touch.

Though all of them use seeraga samba, if you see it, the Arcot biryanis are quite different from the Dindigul ones. In Arcot, they don't use too much garam masala. Max to max, they add a lot of tomatoes with a lot of red chilies as ground paste. And a lot of coriander and pudina leaf. But in the western Mysore side of things, everything gets ground and put as a paste. And I don't see these people use red chilies much. Mostly green chilies, sometimes no chilies at all. The Dindigul side is very much ground garam masala.

Koilpatti and Virudhunagar have a lot of oil resources — groundnut production. You can see the groundnut mittai, peanut mittai, groundnut cakes. And the parotta culture is so prominent. Virudhunagar has the poricha parotta, Madurai has bun parotta, Thoothukudi also has poricha parotta. Thoothukudi has these clubs, nightclubs where you get parottas with different curries — pigeon curry, mutton curry, chicken curry.

Going down from Rajapalayam — Tenkasi, Tirunelveli, Kanyakumari. One thing you can see is that Tirunelveli and Kanyakumari have — maybe it's an influence from Kerala, but I'm kind of seeing they're very native when it comes to vegetarian things like sodhi or avial. Avial you can see across Kerala too, but the sodhi from Tirunelveli is very prominent. It's very common among the Saiva Vellalars, part of their traditional cooking. Even their marriage rituals have a lot of it — mapila sodhi, they call it, because they make it for the newly married grooms.

And the fish curries in South Tamil Nadu have coconut ground paste in them. That you cannot see in the Chennai fish curries, because those are purely made of tamarind paste. But in the south, the coconut paste is there across different recipes, especially fish curries.

The Muslims of Kayalpattinam, Kilakarai, Ramanathapuram — very old communities. And these Muslims are not through any rulers. In the North, the Muslim community has the Nawab influence, the Urdu or Deccani influence. But here, the conversions happened through trade. All of them are Tamil-speaking Muslims. They don't have Urdu as a prominent thing. From Adirampattinam to Kayalpattinam, Thondi, Ramanathapuram — you see all these anams. Also, they add rampe, pandan leaves. They make white kurma, kalari kari. Very unique taste.

And specifically — the Christians have their own recipes. Vivika, plum cakes, macaroons, the baking culture. Vindaloos. The vindaloo is something you see only among Christians — the Kanyakumari people make vindaloo or vindali, which is the same thing as Goan vindaloos. Portuguese origin.

The West

Now, if we leave the North Arcot region and take the broader north and west — Villupuram, Cuddalore, Tiruvannamalai, many places of Vellore, Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri — they don't really have much. The influences I mentioned are very contained. The Muslim and Mudaliar food traditions stayed in Vaniyambadi, Ambur, Arcot — they didn't actually spread to other communities or become very widespread. You cannot see really iconic things in Villupuram or Cuddalore.

The similar thing applies to West Tamil Nadu. The varieties or very prominent things were not seen in the common households. The Arcot Muslims have very prominent contributions — biryanis, dry gulab jamun kind of thing, Senji mutta mittai — but from the other communities, like the Vanniyar communities, I don't see something very prominent. They were working on the fields, they didn't have the time or accessibility or option to come up with very unique or iconic things.

In Tamil Nadu, food is intertwined with social status and how much privilege communities had in the past. How much free time they had to come up with different things. How much of an objective they had — like, "I want something like this." Even the sweet items, like the feernis that Muslims always celebrate — you cannot see such things common among the land-owning or caste Hindus of the North.

But in the South, biryanis, chicken chukka, mutton chukka — these happened maybe out of curiosity or somebody's innovation, and they became very rich in flavors. I don't really see that kind of credit to be given towards West Tamil Nadu.

Some exaggerated things — chicken chinthamani, or the obsessiveness about naatu kozhi, country chicken. The land-owning communities across West Tamil Nadu, especially the Gounders — you can see things like pachai payiru kolambu, kollu thuvayal, and different permutations with chicken. They call it nallambattu chicken, aasari, varuvil, karuvel, so on. But I don't really see unique flavors in these. It's just different ratios of shallots and chilies. Whereas if you take the Kayalpattinam side, they add rampe, pandan leaves, they make white kurma, kalari kari — that's a unique taste I feel. Or avial or adai. I don't see that kind of thing in the West.

Also, culturally as well as gastronomically, there's minimal external influence, minimal transactions or fusions in West Tamil Nadu — or even in Dharmapuri, Krishnagiri, old Salem, Tiruvannamalai, Villupuram, the South Arcot districts.

In the West, the current famous shops and all — it happens out of rarity or scarcity, so people started making things. But if I want to trace back to a unique recipe, maybe chicken chinthamani or Pallipalayam chicken could be considered. But still, I've tasted it many times and I don't really like it — that's my opinion. Maybe I'm biased here, though I'm coming from West Tamil Nadu. I enjoy kollu thuvayal, I enjoy my mom's way of making chicken curry, which is like the many Western Tamil Nadu households' way — they roast shallots, coriander seeds, cumin, cinnamon, cloves, other garam masala items, then mix it, and they call it thanni kolambu. But a very good chicken is always from Madurai and Thoothukudi, Tirunelveli side, I would say.

And sweets — if we could imagine any specific sweet in the West, there is nothing actually. Nothing. The West Tamil Nadu doesn't have any specific sweet, to be honest. In the North, you find mutta mittai, the dry gulab jamun kind of thing across Arcot. In Thoothukudi, thothal halwa and different varieties of halwa, eni mittai. Lots of snacks — athisam, thenkuzhal — across the coastal areas. In Chennai, nowadays everyone's sweet craving is kind of scammed by bread halwa across biryani shops, or simple gulab jamun. And the contemporary things, after the 1970s-80s — Krishna Sweets, Gupta, different bhavans in Chennai have set a different tone. In Coimbatore, only Annapurna.

But I really see a scarcity in terms of culture and food in the West. It's all very confined practices here and there. There are no big temples. If you take from Karur to Coimbatore — bigger temples are not there, bigger festivals are not there. Everywhere it's Mariamman festivals, but that has a very bad story, I would say. I don't think that's a feel-good story behind Mariamman.

Comparatively — I'm not nullifying anything — but the Delta and South should be at the top. And in and around Chennai or Arcot, because Chennai has all the convergences being the capital. But if I could put it, I'd always say Madras and Arcot, because that's a very center of all those things.

Rasipuram is the place where I'm coming from. Rasipuram is known for its ghee. But we don't have much of ghee sweets or something very native to Rasipuram — there is nothing. Or the Palakkad border produces a lot of coconut. But all this region has is chutney — coconut chutney — not coconut sweets. In Thoothukudi, you find thothal halwa made with coconut oil, coconut oil chips across southern Tamil Nadu. Even in the Kaveri Delta, there are still a lot of plantains. But they don't have the variety like nendran or ethangai. All they have is karpooran, karpooravalli, poovan, sometimes thean kadali, rasthali — those are all not good for even making bajjis. They're just edible as fruit, not even as raw plantain. Things vary in variety like this.

The Pattern Underneath

So these are the regions. And how things converge — the trade, migration, kingdoms, administration. That's number one. Number two, the dominance of privileged communities, because they're the ones who bring the common influence across food. And the social hierarchy and status.

I don't think something as a common man celebrates — or maybe as a social enterprise — we never had something from a very common man. Maybe nowadays people are romanticizing, but things to be celebrated in Tamil Nadu have always come from something top in the social hierarchy. This hierarchy shouldn't be there in socio-economic and political things, but ultimately the culture has developed that way because of the past.

All these things evolve because of communities, castes, privileges. It's not like as Tamils as a race we developed something. Maybe for survival we had curry, koozh kind of things, but that's not something to take forward or celebrate. Not like what you see in Arab or Western communities.

This is a first recall — a reflection exercise. Maybe in upcoming notes, I'll write about specific varieties, or how one thing varies — like sambar, how people make it differently from region to region. But this is quite a good exercise of recollection, I would say.