we're in the south of India and we're here to eat we are in the city of
Madurai the street food capital of the south we've got a bunch of gems lined up
to share with you Madurai in the south of India is
paradise for food lovers the food culture is unique exciting and most of
all delicious this is our second video from Madurai and we're delving into the
heart of the local food culture we dive into Madurai's nighttime street food
scene and eat a hard-to-find snack of deep-fried bread food filled with sugary
semolina and devour a Madurai favorite the buttery crispy butter bun we tuck
into a traditional vegetarian banana leaf meal made up of 13 dishes at one of
the city's most popular local spots all for just $1.40 and share with you
Madurai's most famous drink jigarthanda a unique concoction made up of
almond gum and ice cream in this India series we'll show you some of the
country's best food from street food in India's local markets to regional
specialties you don't want to miss this series get ready for some mouth-watering
food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate
we hope you're hungry, let's eat
I'm so stoked to be in Madurai I have wanted to visit this city for so long
and the main reason for that is because it is the street food capital of the
state of Tamil Nadu which is the state that we'e in we're actually at our first
stop already and we have come to this particular stall to find a really unique
treat it's something that is sort of had to find around town and it's a a bread
which is stuffed with a sweet filling this is a really neat atmosphere look there's
this tiny little merry go around here the kids are having a really good time
people are just hanging out eating and whatnot the stall is just up ahead it's
there's a ton of people up there so let's go and join them this is the stand
right here and I can see a bunch of deep-fried goodies vanakkam how are you?
oh this is you that's right yes I saw your famous sojji appam in here
so this is the snack
that we're after it's actually called sojji appam which is a
deep-fried bread which is stuffed with a sweet filling the owner of the
stall was actually showing me this this article that he was in and this was how I
found him through this article and found all his deep how he's famous for
all his deep-fried snacks so let's order a couple
this stall is all go it's really
exciting to be a part of actually because there are tons of people just
crowded around the stall he is making snacks at the rate of knots and there's all
sorts of things there's battered chillies and samosas and vada which are lentil
donuts and then this sojji appam this is what we came here particularly to eat
so essentially what it is is this deep fried bread which has got a stuffing in
it and you can see it's all puffed up it's golden in color and then these these
little bubbles from hitting the oil and I love how it's just served on a piece
of a newspaper so what I might do is just rip in and see what's on the inside
okay that is the filling in there so you can see that it's like a slightly
different color it's actually a type of porridge which is made from
semolina sometimes it's sweetened with sugar or jaggery and then sometimes it
has coconut I'm not sure if this one does at all but let's give it a taste
who doesn't love a bit of deep fried bread that's really good it's
actually not stodgy at all even though it's a deep-fried snack it's relatively
dry it's beautiful and sweet but not overly sweet
that semolina filling is
very light it's just a thin paste on the inside of the bread and the bread whoa
that poori it's just beautiful
oh yeah so good and I
reckon we're gonna have to get a few more because I'm gonna demolish both of
these
there are definitely a few main reasons we wanted to come to Madurai to film one
of them is the street food there is just street food everywhere like what we've just walked
through but it's also known as the street food capital of the south of
India absolute bonus and a big tick in our book for something that we love when
we're traveling anywhere that's considered a street food capital bring
it on but also it's known as the city that
never sleeps and man does it live up to that claim so it's it's about 10:30pm at
night now and it is absolute chaos it's madness look at the amount of
people out here on the streets it feels almost at nighttime like there's more
people than during the day I love it and what we're going to get now is a very
famous drink here in Madurai jigarthanda from this shop right here this
really awesomely lit up shop it's got a really interesting ingredient it's got
the sap from the, almond resin so almond sap in it
vanakkam
the stall is all action it's a cool little stall I can see them making the jigarthanda
one jigarthanda special yeah vanakkam vanakkam nandri oh yeah so this
is the famous jigarthanda so the the home of this drink is here and it's a
drink made up of pretty interesting combination of things a lot of
condensed milk some ice cream and the ice cream has got a beautiful dark color
to it so it's not just a plain ice cream and then the almond sap or the almond
resin and so you can see the bit of ice cream here oh look at that nice ball of ice
cream sitting in the top whoa I'm just gonna get in with the spoon
Oh Oh
super good it's very sweet very creamy very refreshing it's got quite um I'm just
gonna knock some back get some more
yeah it's got quite an earthy taste so very sweet but very earthy as well and
look at the crowd like it's absolutely mad here just been chatting with these
guys they've just knocked back their whole drink it's such a cool little spot
and you're full of this nighttime madness I've been talking about it just
never stops and I love that here in Madurai it's such
an exciting city to be in and this is a really neat drink a real specialty of
Madurai
now we couldn't come to the south of India and not eat a full-on banana leaf
vegetarian meal so we've found a real locals favourite a place where all the locals say
you know this is the best place to come for a veg meal they do it really
really well and it's just here so let's pop in and grab a banana leaf meal
we're in the restaurant it smells really good now before you into the dining room are
you pay for your meals first so a couple of hundred rupee for the both of us and
we get a couple of coupons, nandri
nandri all right so when you sit down at your table when you're eating a
banana leaf meal it is all go so all the banana leaves are already on the table
nandri nandri and the staff will urge you to open up your banana leaf and to to wipe
it clean so they pour water you oooo they pour water the lady was
trying to help me and inadvertently tipped the cup over so I've got a new
banana leaf oh nandri so what we'll do is open it up again sprinkle some water on the
top and then just wipe it clean and then it's all go this gentleman here
mathiya vanakkam is already coming along with all the different some of
the different dishes that he is going to pop on so it's all go tonne of
obviously vegetable dishes because this is gonna be an all vegetarian meal
so a big pile of rice in front of us now so we've got two vegetable dishes a
pickles some salt pile of rice and I think what's going to come next is some
sambar? Dal, dal all right yes please nandri so the dal is going over
the rice is this the sambar oh wonderful yes please so sambar is very common here in
the south of India it is a vegetable stew which has got a tamarind base and
it is wonderful poured over rice oh nandri
and some little chickpea fritters and I think maybe some buttermilk or curd
it's quite thick so I think it's curd oh yes ghee please and some ghee is going over
the top so a type of clarified butter nandri now this lady is bringing over a
sweet so we've got sweet we've got savory
we've got things to cool our mouths down in that curd
this is looking really good
that whole situation can be quite overwhelming we've
literally sat down for about two minutes and we've had about five or six
people come up to us load our banana plate up our banana leaf plate up with an
array of food so we're totally packed out with food now and this is a really
sort of casual restaurant it's called a mess so and a mess is a very popular
eatery in the south of India really casual no frills and very affordable
this looks super good oh nandri to cap off the meal the lady chucked a
papad with a wee chilli on top of it and this banana leaf is just loaded
with things I think there's something like 13 items on this banana leaf and
it's all included in that one coupon price so it was a hundred rupees each
this is sensational so let me talk you through what we've got we've got a pile
of rice and it's covered in dal and then we've got three types of different
curries so this one here has got tomatoes and zucchini in it this one's
got I think some sort of bean and onions this one here is a potato and tomato one
and then over here we've got little stainless steel pottles of bits and bobs
this one's a soup then we've got the thick curd sambar which I was explaining is a vegetable stew
with a tamarind base this is the sweet here and then this here is rasam which is a soup that is
good to mix in with your rice at the end of the meal then we've got a little
I think I said chickpea fritter I think it's actually a lentil fritter and I can see
all sorts of spices in there and then we've got pickle and some salt so when in
India you eat with your hands so I'm gonna chuck some of this sambar onto my
rice I love sambar it is sensational and just mix it all up so I've got some
of the dal in there this is the sambar and I'm just going to taste the rice and
the sambar on its own
it's so hearty it's got tamarind in it and it's got dal so
urad dal cooked in with it mustard seeds and what not let's try some of
these curries so I want to try this potato curry so it's got some fennel seeds in
there and also some tomato so I'll mix it up with my rice
mm-hmm it's great it's
quite spicy beautifully cooked that potato it's very soft now with the the
temperature of the meal basically all of these side dishes are room temperature it's
the only the rice that is steaming hot and so you can really get in
straightaway and start eating eat with your hand when you're in India which I
really love because it's really fun and you are sort of connecting with
your food as you're doing it let's get into this zucchini and tomato one so I'm gonna
add that to my dal and what I think is going to add texture to the meal is if I break up
this papad and actually get it into a bite
mmm-hmm that curry is quite spicy too spicier than the potato has a beautiful
acidic um acidity from the tomato and the the zucchini is super soft I
love that papad it is so crunchy and crispy it's
perfect for adding crunch to the bite
this lady's topping me up with sambar because you've gotta have a lot of
sambar to put on your rice and what's great about this is that if this is not
gonna fill me up they can keep topping me up so more rice more of the
curries more sambar until you're absolutely stuffed this is such a great
vegetarian feast Thomas and I always say that if there was one place that we
could turn that we would turn vegetarian it'd be India the spices that
they use and the flavour that they can a extract from things is unreal
so I just poured some curd onto my rice because I really love it together
it's a great combo
mmm so curd is yogurt this is quite cold it takes the heat out
of all of the spicy curries that you're eating and so it just cleanses the
palate mmm so good
it's creamy it's tangy and now that my mouth has
stopped being on fire I can get back into the heat again and then when I
want a bit of respite have some more curd rice
next up we're gonna have a real Madurai street food and I'm very excited
about this one because it looks incredibly good
maalai vanakkam it looks so good
we've ordered a butter
bun from this this street stall so this is a real specialty here in Madurai and
this is the butter bun cooking up and it is as simple as it sounds it's butter and
a bun oh so two epic ingredients and you should smell
the butter coming off that smells incredible oh it's the most luscious
smell so the butter bun is cooking up right now
I love when a street food is as simple as this so butter bun and we went with
the sugar version so really simple street stall you can see all the buns
lined up up the top here then he grabbed it he coated it in a ton of butter and
look at this so it was just fried up on this little hot plate here and then he's
dumped a massive wad of butter on the top when it's come off the hot plate and
some sugar so it looks like some palm sugar on there so sprinkled sugar all
over the top so you can go with sugar or no sugar and we went with the sugar
option oh man this is insanely hot that butter
is absolutely boiling it is drenched in butter
Wow oh very nice oh man butter
and sugar explosion
oh wow look at him he's doing another one look at the amount of
butter that he's shoving on there so you can see it's just swimming in butter
bubbling away and then he just pushes down flips it over that is an
incredible snack wow so simple and so so tasty
stuff going for a slice I'm getting the whole thing
hmm oh that is very decadent gosh that tastes good
that tastes so good my fingers are covered in oil the banana leaf it is on
is shimmering with oil or with butter sorry with the oils from the butter
oh the smells around the stand and the taste of this
mmm absolutely amazing that is a really good snack