This Chennai food festival channels Madurai through fiery spices and comforting classics

To evoke Madurai through food is to take on a city that rarely slows down. At Ayna, Thoonga Nagaram embraces that challenge with a festival menu rooted in the city’s vibrant street-food culture, translating its restless energy into flavours both bold and familiar. It begins quietly enough, with cooling paanagam and mellow paruthi paal gently scented with cardamom, before unfolding into dishes that echo Madurai’s unmistakable intensity.

This food festival is an ode to Madurai’s restless food culture

As soon as the thali landed, we went straight for the mutton biriyani. The meat is partly red, bone-falling soft, and so indulgent that it slows our conversation right away. It is heavy in the best possible sense, rich, and enveloping; this biriyani alone is enough to put you in a food coma. The one miss: the heat. Madurai biriyani bites back, and this one doesn’t quite get there.

The kalakki is soft, mildly spicy, and exactly what it should be, a classic left alone to be itself. Then came the mutton chukka varuval, which comes close to the original heat. The spices are well balanced, the mutton genuinely good; this one earns its place. But it’s the eral milagu perattal that takes the heat back fully. The pepper and green chilli bring in the heat that’s quintessential Madurai and sits at the back of your throat long after the plate is gone. If that dish isn’t Madurai, nothing is.

The Kola urundai kuzhambu arrives next, tangy and spiced, the urundai carrying a floury texture that edges closer to a veg version than the meat-heavy original. For anyone who grew up in Madurai, this hits close to home in a way that’s hard to explain and easy to feel. The ayira meen kuzhambu is simpler still and honest, exactly as you’d have it at home, no more, no less.

We finished with the wheat halwa, grainy, nutty, sweetness kept mercifully in check. A good ending, though the jigarthanda that followed was on the watery side, which is perhaps the only place the festival stumbles visibly.

For those wanting to take a piece of Madurai home, Hilton Chennai has also curated a small range of artisanal products inspired by the festival, including Madurai idli milagai podi, Kari sukka masala, tomato thokku, and traditional sweets like nei halwa and karupatti Mysore pak.

Meal for one: Rs 2,100 onwards. On till May 31. From 6.30 pm to 11 pm. At Ayna, Hilton, Guindy.

Email: shivani@newindianexpress.com
X: @ShivaniIllakiya

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