27 September,2026 10:12 AM IST | Mumbai | Nasrin Modak Siddiqi
Kuthiraivali thaddal with kadaranga orukai; Kathirikai paasu; Panam pazha puttu with kalarikari anaam
Along Tamil Nadu's southeastern coast, the Gulf of Mannar is more than a stretch of water. Coral reefs and seagrass beds give way to fishing settlements, salt pans and a parched hinterland. Twenty-one islands sit offshore. Palmyra grows inland. Rice, millets, and pulses sustain the drylands. The sea provides fish, shellfish, and seaweed, along with the methods of drying, fermenting and preserving them.
Chef Gokul Kumar Mohit, better known as Goku, set out to understand this interconnected food geography for MSK (formerly Magazine St. Kitchen)'s IP, Uncharted India's The Gulf of Mannar edition, a 12-course tasting menu at their revamped space in Byculla. A Culinary Institute of America graduate and co-founder of Chennai-based Tamil Quarter, Goku works around regional Tamil and indigenous Indian cuisines. For this menu, he went to fishermen, home cooks, artisans, and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees to understand its social history. Here, among other things, he learnt that the tuna in your sushi is most often caught off India's southeastern coasts, and that seaweed used in Korea's skincare and food industries is, too.
He approaches any unfamiliar food culture by connecting with friends from the region or someone who knows about the local food. Once there, he spends days asking questions and visiting local messes, restaurants and markets. "Most of my seafood knowledge comes from fishermen. They eat everything and have a variety to prepare every kind of catch."
Framed as a journey from Tuticorin to Ramnad to Mumbai, the menu is less a study of coastal cuisine than an attempt to draw the culinary map of a relatively underexplored region. For Goku, the starting point is not technique but understanding. "My intention is not to reinvent the cuisine but to honour it," he says. "I see food as an ecosystem, heritage and identity; for me, the work begins with understanding the people, ingredients and practices behind it before deciding where my own technique belongs."
While Goku's professional training includes Michelin-starred kitchens in the US, including Aureole, Rezdora, and Junoon, that precision is deployed here in service of research rather than over it. "You can alter the spice levels, but the soul of the dish needs to remain the same. Every dish has an interesting story. People don't always remember a dish's taste but if you tell it with a story, it adds depth to it, and they remember it better," he adds.
The meal begins with Mudalur Muscoth Halwa, a Thoothukudi sweet with a Ceylon connection. It is an unexpected opening for a menu associated with the sea, but that is precisely the point. Food has travelled across the Palk Strait for generations, carrying ingredients, techniques, and memories between Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. The halwa reminds us that the waters separating two shores have also connected them historically.
Preservation is another thread. Manja Vaada brings maasi (dried tuna) used in Tamil coastal cooking, to the table. Eral Thoppa moves towards fresh squid and shrimp, drawn from fishermen cooking near the beach while waiting for the catch, stuffing whole squid with shrimp and cooking it over fire. Together, the dishes create a conversation between what is eaten fresh and what is made to last.
Further inland, Kuthiraivali Thaddal foregrounds barnyard millet with a Ramnad bitter-apple pickle, drawing attention to a dryland pantry that the romance of the coast can easily eclipse. Panam Pazha Puttu combines palmyra with Kaatuyanam red rice. Then there is seaweed, collected along parts of the Gulf coast, particularly by women in Ramanathapuram's coastal communities, and used in Vellaichor Virundhu. It is treated not as an exotic addition but as something gathered from the ecosystem and woven into local food practices.
However, Goku is wary of turning unfamiliar ingredients into the next urban food trend. "You should enjoy it in that region as far as possible when you visit. When demand for a local ingredient increases, it puts pressure on the ecosystem and it's never sustainable," he adds.
The menu also makes room for the region's Tamil Muslim culinary traditions. Kayalpatnam Ahani Biryani draws on the coastal town's distinctive white biryani, characterised by coconut milk and pandan. Goku retains those signatures while using Seeraga Samba rice and country chicken; the vegetarian version turns to jackfruit.
This is where a larger idea about Tamil cuisine comes into focus. Millets, not rice, were a staple in the state. "Tamil food has this beauty of accepting things and then making it its own," Goku says. Centuries of trade, migration, and cultural exchange have shaped Tamil food, from Southeast Asian connections and Maratha influence in Tanjavur to diaspora cuisines across Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Singapore, South Africa and beyond. Ingredients and techniques may change, but culinary identity persists through flavours.
Even fermentation gets its place on the menu. Koolichor draws on the region's fermented-rice tradition, pairing sea-urchin roe thuvayal in the non-vegetarian menu with Ramnathapuram Mundu chilli thuvayal in the veg version.
Pulianam, the coconut milk-and-tamarind rasam of Tamil Muslim coastal kitchens, and Kathirikai Paagu, built around eggplant, jaggery, coconut and badam pisin, complete the meal. The curd rice gelato was a beautiful surprise.
Together, the dishes resist the temptation to define the Gulf through a single ingredient or culinary shorthand. Seafood sits beside millet. Dried fish sits beside palmyra. Traditional rice varieties sit beside seaweed. Tamarind and coconut recur across preparations. Preservation and fermentation are as important as freshness.
That is what makes Goku's approach different from simply recreating regional dishes in a restaurant. He is interested in the people behind them, the circumstances that produced them and the journeys that allowed them to evolve. "There's so much people's effort, so many people's happiness, sorrow, mixed emotions that go into every dish. As a chef, I want to tell about other people's stories through my food too. For those who wish to take recipes to their graves, I ask, what's the point? If you create something, you need to be able to share it with other people so it lives on," he says.
For Goku, documentation is not about freezing a cuisine in time. Food changes with new ingredients, places and circumstances. The challenge is to allow that evolution without losing the thread of where it came from. "Many of these dishes are lost recipes, and only a few homes in that region still make it. Recipes disappear not necessarily because people stop valuing them, but because life changes. Sometimes it is because you stopped cooking it because you or your child don't like it and so it will never be passed on," he adds.
By the time it arrived in the beautiful setting at MSK, the food and the stories of the region made sure that the Gulf of Mannar is no longer just a body of water on a map. It became a collection of tastes, practices, and stories, brought together for a few evenings before returning to the places they came from. In Goku's telling, the chef is less the author of this cuisine than its interpreter: someone willing to listen closely enough to let the region determine what he cooks.
