ClayPot

The Thippasandra version of this restaurant has been around for sometime now. But we’ve never managed to go there. So, when we saw an ad that announced the opening of a Thavarekere version, we didn’t waste much time in checking it out.

When coming from Dairy Circle, take a right turn on to Thavarekere Main Road (this is the road opposite Prestige Acropolis -Dairy Circle side/diagonally opposite the Dairy Circle entrance of Forum/right next to the SKC outlet). Keep going down this road, soon you’ll find Prestige St.John’s Woods on your left, and after about 200 m, you’ll find a fork in the road. Take the one towards the left, and then take the first left turn, and you’ll find Claypot on the left. Yes, like a lot of Mallu things, this one is quite left oriented. 🙂

ClayPot is the typical ‘no frills’ Mallu neighbourhood restaurant, though it serves North Indian, Chinese and Kerala cuisine. The first two are what we call Mallu versions of these cuisines, which would include things like Dall fry, Shreaded chicken with capscum, baiging chicken (sic sic sic), but then if you’re looking for perfection in such matters, you shouldn’t be here. This is the place to be when you want to gorge on Mallu stuff.

We ordered a Malabar style Chicken Fry, a ClayPot special chicken curry, a Karimeen Pollichathu and to go with all of that, an appam, a couple of mutta appams (egg appams), and a Kerala Porotta. The Malabar chicken fry is cooked in the best cooking oil in the world (for us mallus) – yep, coconut oil, and comes adorned with crisply fried onion. There are three pieces in one portion and is quite non spicy, that, I’m guessing is a rarity here, though to be fair, they do mark the spicy stuff with a chilli icon. The ClayPot special chicken curry is a white gravy with boneless chicken in a coconut milk base and is garnished with a full boiled egg. It looks harmless but is quite spicy, and the portion is more than sufficient for two people. Karimeen (Pearl Spot) Pollichathu is fried fish with a thick masala coating which is tomato and onion based with a strong Kokum (Kodum Puli) flavor. This one is delicious, but super spicy. The appams as well as the porotta turned out good too. We wanted to try some mussel dishes, but they’d run out of the stuff.  They did have some quail dishes, but I’m sure that if we tried to squeeze that in too, it’d be our stomachs which would be quailing!!

All of the above cost us just over Rs.350. That would tell you the story. You come here to have some excellent Mallu food without burning a hole in your pocket. While they have some North indian/Chinese veg options, I’d recommend this place only to hard core non veggies who can handle spicy stuff. There are many many more options that they offer in the Mallu cuisine part, and we’ll definitely go back for more.

ClayPot, #1/1, 1st Cross, Thavarekere, BTM Layout. Ph: 42190344/55, 9632227355

Update: Heard this one’s now closed