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For most of his career, chef Regi Mathew has championed the foods of his homeland of Kerala, India. At Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Chennai and Bengaluru, chef Mathew works to preserve the area’s diverse food traditions, using recipes gleaned from mothers and home cooks across the region.
It's this commitment that earned the chef a designation as one of India’s top chefs in 2024. The following year, the chef decided to share his story to a larger audience, making his stateside debut with Chatti by Regi Mathew. A culmination of his three-year journey cooking across the southern state, the midtown restaurant serves as an homage to Kerala's iconic toddy shops with grilled lamb chops to clay pot fish curries. Now the chef is going a step further, bringing one of the region’s largest festivals to NYC.
From August 24th to August 27th, Chatti is throwing an extravagant feast in celebration of the state’s most recognized holiday, Onam. So what is Onam? Generally falling between August and October, Onam is a ten-day festival that marks the Malayalam New Year and celebrates the harvest season in Kerala. On the final day, known as Thiruvonam, the festival culminates with a grand vegetarian feast known as Onasadhya. In Chatti’s case, the restaurant will be marking the holiday with a feast of its own, cooking up a whopping 27 dishes, all vegetarian with a few dishes that are completely vegan.
All served on a banana leaf, Chatti’s multi-course feast starts with thick cuts of raw banana, fried and coated in jaggery syrup (sarkara varattiyahtu), sun-dried crispy curd chilies (mulagu kondattam) and two types of achar, mango and Kerala lime pickle known as naranga. The menu continues with sambar and pappadam before finishing with Kerala’s spiced buttermilk as a finale, flavored with shallots, ginger, curry leaves and green chilies.
Even better, this veritable feast comes at a pretty reasonable price given its extravagant lineup, running $95 for adults, $75 for kids. Keep in mind, the feast is only available for lunch on August 24, August 25 and August 27, with seatings starting at 11:30am, with just one dinner date on August 26.
You can always try to nail the dinner res, but if a lunchtime feast is the only option, just be ready to work in a midday nap. You can book Chatti's Onasadhya experience on OpenTable and Resy.