New Delhi: Shawarmas, Shawayya, Al-Faham and Mandi have become part of Kerala’s everyday vocabulary. The names might seem familiar yet confusing for those in the Arab world, but in Kerala, this is Arabic food served alongside traditional fare. And it all started with the humble but ubiquitous Shawarma.
Today, Arabic food trends are being replicated in real time in Kerala. The Egyptian dessert chain B.Laban opened in the UAE in 2024, and its aesthetic, social-media-viral desserts found an immediate audience in Kerala. Multiple outlets with the ‘Laban’ suffix opened across the state, offering their own variants of the trending milk-and-cream desserts.
For night-time arrivals, as you exit Kochi’s Nedumbassery airport and head into the city, bright neon signs guide your path home, tempting the curious palate with offerings of exotic cuisines ranging from Yemeni to Turkish.
Why Arabic food works
All of this has transformed Arabic food from a Gulf nostalgia fix into a full-fledged culinary category in Kerala.
“After traditional Kerala food, Arabic food is the biggest food segment in the state. It probably takes 60-70 per cent of that market,” said Gim George, founder of the pan-India Kerala Café. “Cuisines like Chinese, which do well elsewhere, don’t have a foothold here. Even Pizza doesn’t feature in the consideration set.” He attributes the rise of Arabic food to the value it offers the Malayalee – the Rs 100 Shawarma is bang for the buck and the Rs 800 Mandi that feeds four offers value to families and large groups.
Origins
By the early 2000s, the Shawarma – thin slices of meat roasted on a slow-turning vertical spit – had begun making its presence felt. Wrapped in the local version of kuboos (Arabic pita bread), it was an instant hit, offering a quick protein-and-carb grab-and-go at an affordable price. Malayalees had still not taken to Western fast food, but the Middle Eastern variant seemed too enticing — as if they were already culturally primed for it.
The Shawarma frenzy took off to such an extent that some would claim there was a roadside Shawarma setup every 2 km in Kochi. They mushroomed so fast that multiple Shawarma health scares erupted over the years; alleged ‘Shawarma deaths’ became a recurring news feature. The beloved wrap was even banned in Kochi for a period.
Shawarma has since made a careful and considered comeback. Shawarma chains like Al-Taza go to great lengths to justify their claim that they serve the safest Shawarma in town.
The road is paved
Zam Zam restaurant is a culinary institution in Thiruvananthapuram. The name refers to the sacred water from the Zamzam well in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, much desired by many Hajj/Umrah pilgrims. For world-travelled Arjun, who grew up in the city, a pilgrimage to the restaurant is a must for what he calls the best “Shawayya” in the world.
Shawayya and Al-Faham are not terms you commonly come across in authentic Arabic restaurants. But the North Kerala owners of Zam Zam had a vision twenty years ago: these dishes could be presented to the previously non-experimental Malayalee (at least in the gastronomic sense).
‘Shawayya’ is an Arabic term meaning roasted, while ‘Al-Faham’ refers to charcoal. These two marinated chicken dishes are prepared accordingly — the Shawayya in a gas-fired rotisserie spit and the Al-Faham finished on a grill. Most of these dishes were incubated in North Kerala, along the Malabar coast, before moving south. They even spill over up north into nearby cities like Mangalore, which share a similar cultural demographic.
Mandi madness
The pandemic year 2020 also reportedly played a role in supercharging this shift. As families stayed indoors, Malayalees turned to familiar Gulf flavours — Shawarma, Al-Faham, Kuzhimanthi. Nearly 25,000 Arabian food restaurants opened during that period, a boom that set the stage for the Mandi craze now ruling Kerala’s food scene.
Currently ruling the roost in Kerala over the past few years is Mandi, a Yemeni rice-and-meat dish, and its popular Kerala-fied variant, the ‘Kuzhimanthi’. The ‘Kuzhi’ refers to a charcoal-fuelled, cylindrical underground pit in which the dish is cooked – with chunks of well-cooked, spiced meat dripping fat onto a bed of flavourful rice at the bottom, pressure-cooker style.
Initially thought to be too blandly spiced for Malayalee tastebuds, it has now been elevated to a new level with variants like Masala and Peri-Peri Al-Faham chicken topping the Mandi rice. And Malayalees are loving it.
Al Reem Mandi, one of the most popular chains in town, started in 2010. The owner, Sudhir KC, is originally from Malappuram, as many such establishment owners are.
“The hype around Mandi started around 2019-2020 and just hasn’t died down,” said Aashiq, a manager at Al Reem Mandi. Their Thammanam branch alone serves almost 250 full-chicken dishes a day.
The short long-history
Kerala’s connection to Arabia dates back centuries, beginning in the 7th century when Muslim spice traders from the Persian Gulf arrived on the Malabar coast. As some settled in Kerala and married local people, their culinary practices blended naturally with the local cuisine.
In an interview with The New Indian Express in 2022, chief Suresh Pillai had said that the rise of Arabic influence in Kerala started around a decade ago.
“Malabar cuisine, though it has Persian-Arabic influence, is tweaked with the local ingredients. The dishes are part of Kerala cuisine,” he had told the paper, adding that the import of foreign dishes like Shawarama and Mandi is a recent phenomenon.
Most of this was brought home by the first generation of returnees from the Gulf states. Many had worked at the omnipresent ‘Malabari-Cafes’ that provide quick and affordable food to Gulf residents. These small restaurants follow a simple template and an almost identical menu. Most of the food is pre-prepared and needs minimal treatment before being served. Rotisserie chicken and Shawarma are staple offerings.
Unlike migrants to the West, Gulf migrants are not given citizenship; they are bound to return. During the frequent boom-and-bust cycles in these countries, particularly during the Great Recession, many workers returned seeking economic opportunities. As luck would have it, they came back with working knowledge of a very successful food business. With almost one out of five Kerala households having a Gulf migrant, they found an audience ready to consume what they offered. Arabic food and Kerala were a match waiting to happen.
Mayo supremacy
One thing that binds all Arabian food in Kerala is mayonnaise. Bewildering for some, but all the aforementioned offerings require a mayonnaise serving alongside. While no one in Yemen making their Mandi would have come across mayonnaise, according to Francis Malaikkal, owner of Yubu, a fried-chicken QSR in Kochi, “The Malayalee refuses to eat his chicken and rice without a healthy splash of Mayo.”
This view was reinforced by Yaseer, the manager at Spicy Hut Arabian Kuzhimanthi restaurant: “Mayo is a must with our Mandi.”
Even Shihab, the manager at Haji Ebrahim Shawarma, attested to this. He added, though, that his Shawarma chain was one of the few that offers the more traditional ‘Tahini’ too.
Cherry on top, cheese on the bottom
As B.Laban imitators spawn all across Kerala, another Middle Eastern dessert has captured the public imagination: the Kunafa. The stretchy, cheese-based, semolina-crusted, sugar-syrup-drenched dessert is popular across the Gulf and the Levant. But in Kerala, Kunafa has gone where its Arab creators have not. There are entire chain outlets selling just this one dessert in its many — Lotus Biscoff, Oreo, Nutella, KitKat, Snickers — variants. This is the ‘Gulf Malabari Café’ imagination at work, where the most inventive and creatively named juice and milkshake mixes are found.
Meat, Mayo, and Malayalees — the 3Ms make for a winning combination.
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)