Katori versus banana leaf: The geography of cuisine

Hindustan Times

15-05-2025

Is South Indian food more messy than North Indian food or is it more sensual? Is it because we eat on a banana leaf which is to food what the napkin/plate/tablecloth combo is for other foods? Is it because North India brings out its katori army, arranged like chess pieces, with one bowl for each dish? Is it because our gravies – think sambar, olan and stew – are more runny than their rajma or rogan josh? How does India eat and why does it eat this way? Is it because restaurants have changed how we eat or is it intrinsic to the food?
Chef Sara Jacob links it to the North Indian 'katori system' versus the South Indian eating on a banana leaf. Sara is in Bengaluru to do a pop up called Nair on Fire at Lush restaurant in Renaissance Bengaluru Race Course hotel. She specialises in Kerala cuisine that she markets through Instagram with celebrity endorsement and restaurant pop-ups across the country. Sara tells me how the pop-ups she does in Delhi are different from the ones she does in Bengaluru. In Delhi, she says, she arranges her dishes in neat layers, allowing for people to use a fork and spoon. In Bengaluru, she doesn't have to do any of this, serving her eriseri, puliseri, olan and stews in mud pots. The dozen-odd people at my table all mix the dishes by hand without any self-consciousness and are clearly enjoying themselves, which is why I asked the original question: is South Indian food more messy than North Indian food?
'Not messy. More sensual,' says Chef Regi Mathew who runs Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Bengaluru and Chennai. He describes all the ways in which we use our fingers, which are intuitive and natural to me. In South India, we are not shy about eating. We use our entire hand to work with the food. We have the concept of 'pesanju' which is mixing and mashing with our fingers. It is supremely sensual, I agree, but it also looks messy. There are many advantages to this method of eating. Using your hands tells you the temperature of the food – if it is too hot to put in your mouth. You can mix a banana with the Kerala puttu in this same manner allowing the mashed banana to leak through your fingers, giving you the pleasant sensation of feeling the cold banana with the hot puttu. My North Indian friends cannot stand to even see this leaking banana between my fingers, let alone emulate it.
North Indians also have an aversion to using the palms of their hands, perhaps because theirs is more of a roti culture rather than a rice culture. Sure, they use their hands to eat but tend to stick to delicately touching food with the tips of their fingers rather than the, shall I say, more robust way in which South Indians eat. I have known Chennai weddings where we all licked our entire palm when it was coated with curd rice or payasam. To eat a runny rasam-rice with your hand involves a deft centrifugal movement in which you somehow contain the rapidly running rasam-rice into the palms of your hand and then quickly down it in one lick, like a serpent swallowing a vole. This vainglorious (some would call it inglorious) method of eating comes naturally to us in South India, perhaps because we weren't subject to waves of invasion. We are not self-conscious about our ways.
Some part of it is also familiarity, as food consultant Aslam Gafoor says. People in Old Delhi are very comfortable eating parathas with their hands in a manner that can also be called messy. But take them to a restaurant and they will use the spoon. So are restaurants the real culprits? Are they the ones who have changed how India eats? I think there is some truth to that. The five-star restaurants of India take their cue from their Western counterparts and – with a few exceptions – expect us to eat Indian dishes with a fork and spoon. This is true of the five-star Indian restaurant-chains like Bukhara, Jamavar, Loya and others.
Familiarity with the cuisine is the other factor. The same North Indians who eat chole-bhature with their hands will eat upma (a South Indian dish) with a spoon. South Indians on the other hand, have an aversion to the spoon.
Sure, I haven't mentioned the other parts of India but I think the divisions are clear. Katori or banana leaf, rice or roti, fingers or palms, runny gravy or thick, invasions or not. These determine your eating habits.
(Shoba Narayan is Bengaluru-based award-winning author. She is also a freelance contributor who writes about art, food, fashion and travel for a number of publications.)