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delicacy. Thewaiters, youngmenwitheasy
grins who’ve beenwith Stephens through
a career that spans nearly 30 years, are
already turning people away.
Stephens was once bound for the top
tier of India’s culinary ranks. He served
as executive chef of the restaurant
Southern Spice at the famed Taj Coro-
mandel hotel inChennai, but le when he
felt unable to fully pursue his passions.
“Openingmy own restaurantwas a dream,
and no accolades can ever replace your
dream,” he says.
So he opened a fish shack where he
could focus on his specialty: Porichathu
cuisine, a seafood-heavy amalgam of
Keralan and Portuguese flavors that
includes dishes like fish
chu u
, a creamy
stew of seer fish and cardamom, and the
ubiquitous
karimeen
fry, in which the
fish is served with head and tail intact
and with nothing but a few sliced veggies
as accompaniment. While neither is as
elaborate in presentation as the dishes he
created as a five-star chef, the payoff is just
as rewarding. All that remains of the lunch
rush is a heap of impeccably clean-picked
fish bones.
Asked if he ever regrets giving up the
promiseof international acclaim, Stephens
wipes the sweat offhis foreheadwitha yel-
lowed rag. “Simple food and happy faces,”
he says. “It is enough.” —A.M.
SCALING BACK
Fried
karimeen
is one of
the simple but sublime
Keralan dishes served by
chef Jude Allen Stephens
plate. Wincingly bitter (though made
tastier with a dash of salt), it is the
one dish every Keralan will finish
before moving on to dessert. That’s
because the fruit contains a poly-
peptide called gurmarin that sup-
presses the body’s neural response
to sweet stimuli, which means
satisfaction comes from only a few
spoonfuls of
payasam
—as opposed
to a second helping. —A.M.
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