Since I wrote about the cuisine of Kerala and Glenview’s terrific grocery-caterer Kairali Food & Events last week, someone pointed out that there is, in fact, a full-service restaurant in the area featuring the food of India’s southwestern state. That would be the two-year-old Mainland India in Niles, whose menu looks very promising.
In early May, she and Kalathil opened Thattu with a concise menu of four entree-size dishes and a few snacks, including the biscuits and egg curry, but also Kerala-style fried chicken, a mild coriander chicken curry, and a Portuguese-influenced vegetable stew called ishtu. Her black-chickpea kadala curry is a lighter but spicier version of one of my favorite dishes from Kairali Foods, while her kimchi upma is an astonishingly tasty and unexpected union of spicy fermented cabbage, fluffy steamed semolina, and crispy fried shallots.
