South & North Indian Cuisine Inc. opens in Hicksville
The Kerala meal at South & North Indian Cuisine Inc. in Hicksville comes with a variety of vegetable and fish dishes. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
With a name like South & North Indian Cuisine Inc., you know exactly what you're getting when you walk into the humble room. But that's not the whole story. The new restaurant by the Hicksville train station also dives deep into Kerala, a tropical Indian state with a fascinating history and a love of coconut, which makes the food beguilingly creamy and fruity. It opened in the spring.
The menu is full of interesting categories like cutlets, Kerala snacks, Kerala breakfast items and non-veg roast. Nothing has a description, but luckily owner Roshan Thomas is an excellent guide. He was on hand during a recent evening, explaining all of the dishes and offering up a unique Kerala style lassi drink called morum vellam ($5.99). Served in a beer mug, it looks like a plain yogurt lassi, but the taste is explosive. Kerala is in Southern India and can get very hot, he explained, and this is the perfect remedy. The heavily spiced drink roars with green chili, giving it a flavor almost like green salsa.
South & North Indian Cuisine Inc. has gone into the Hicksville train station space previously occupied by Taste of Chennai. Credit: Newsday/Andi Berlin
Thomas, who has a background in catering, opened the place in the former home of another Southern Indian spot, Taste of Chennai, which recently moved to a larger, spiffier space in Bethpage. His mother, Princy Kuruvilla, is doing the cooking. The Hicksville dining room looks pretty similar to its previous iteration, except now it's dotted with Christian imagery that reflects his heritage. The coastal state has a large Christian community, which some historians say has been there for millennia.
We started our meal with an order of cutlets ($6), which come in both chicken and fish with mashed potatoes. (It's traditionally made with beef, which is more popular in Kerala than it is in other Indian states.) In Kerala, cutlets are associated with the Catholic community and often served at Christmas, Easter and other celebratory events. This fried nugget was absolutely delicious, with a texture like a meaty spiced croquette and a sauce that tasted like a thinner ketchup.
If you'd like to try a few different curries, the Kerala meal ($24.99) is the way to go. The steel thali meal platter is divided up into nine different compartments, and each has a sauce or mash of a different color. There is a neon pink sauce called pachadi, made from beetroot and yogurt, as well as several sambals and mixes of chopped veggies and coconut shreds. The matta rice from Kerala is a shorter, puffier grain rather than the long basmati, and you can eat it with your hands along with the coconutty mixes.
But the banger of the meal was a pure white curry called paalkappa ($19.99). The thick gravy is made from coconut milk simmered with fragrant mustard seeds and fresh curry leaves. Your spoon digs in and pulls out large bulbs of starchy tapioca root, which was brought from South America to India in the 19th century. It's vegetarian, yet incredibly hearty and satisfying.
South & North Indian Cuisine Inc., 39 W. John St., Hicksville, 516-778-7397, southnorthcuisineny.com. Open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
Andi Berlin is from Arizona and does not know where she is going. But when she gets there, she’ll find something beautiful and delicious that the world needs to taste.
