Thattu -- Kerala food in Avondale (formerly Politan Row)

I was there recently. It is a food hall place with a VERY limited menu. I had the Appam, Kadala Curry, Ishtu, Ghee Rice and Masala Biscuits. Everything was tasty; and moreover I have had these things for the first time in this country. The food is really well made, fresh tasting and the people running it are really nice. Plus they have a Temple Elephant ornament adorning the wall.

Appam is a Rice flour Crepe and it was cooked to order. It is as good as I remember eating in India. Ishtu is a Potuguese-Indian mashup that works really well (coconut milk based watery vegetable stew). Kadala Curry is a south Indian version of the Chana Masala, made with southie spices and the smaller variety of chickpeas called Kaala Chana. Outstanding. The Ghee rice is essentially a lightly flavored pulav with cardamaom, cashew and raisins along with the Ghee. Again, really tasty. Masala Biscuits is what we called Khara Biscuits in Hyderabad. It is spicy. I would rather get this to go and have it with some Hot Masala Chai rather than eat it at the place.

Everything was fantastic; and I will be going here often. The only thing I can try next time; along with the aforementioned; is the Egg Curry. I am a vegetarian so I did not try the Chicken curry.

Thattu
111 N Aberdeen St.
Hours:
SUN-THU 11AM-10PM
FRI-SAT 11AM-11PM

Website:https://chicago.politanrow.com/thattu

Sula wrote about this place back in June and that got me pretty excited. He's actually written favorable things about a number of places in the Politan Row Food Court. Your post just moved Thattu even further up my 'must try' list - thanks!

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I have only been to Politan Row food court in the West Loop 1 time last month and tried LaShuk Street Food, the place right next to Thattu was the best hummus I have tried in Chicago.. Although the price point is very high for what you get which is the target audience of this more high end food court. Next time I am in the area I will make it an effort to try out Thattu.

I had a fantastic maiden outing to Politan Row recently. We tried a few things from Thattu that were interesting and tasty. We started with Kerala fried chicken. It had huge masala flavors with a definite burn. The texture left a little to be desired– the style is not breaded and our order did not seem fresh from the fryer, so it was a bit chewy. The thin coriander chicken curry had deep spicing too. The star of the show was definitely the appam, which was a first for me and had a delightful range of textures from pillowy/bubbly to toasty on the bottom. I look forward to sampling more of their vegetarian dishes, sopped up with that amazing flat bread.

I will save this for another thread, but the beef rendang at Bumbu Roux was the best thing I've eaten all year.

Cool place, finally one of these newfangled food courts features new concepts by enterprising chefs from a wide diversity of backgrounds (vs. the usual suspects at the other joints.)

A permanent home for Thattu, a James Beard Award-nominated and Jean Banchet Award-winning Indian restaurant that started as a pop-up dinner series and a stall at a West Loop food hall, is under construction in Avondale, steps away from Metropolitan Brewing Company and food incubator Guild Row.

https://chicago.eater.com/2022/1/20/228 ... a-avondale

Dave148 wrote:

A permanent home for Thattu, a James Beard Award-nominated and Jean Banchet Award-winning Indian restaurant that started as a pop-up dinner series and a stall at a West Loop food hall, is under construction in Avondale, steps away from Metropolitan Brewing Company and food incubator Guild Row.

https://chicago.eater.com/2022/1/20/228 ... a-avondale

They’d like to open by the end of March and are instituting a no-tipping policy. Their prices will have the cost of service baked in.

https://flip.it/CVXdv-

We had a wonderful meal at the Avondale location on Friday. The space is gorgeous — high ceilings and an industrial look.

The food was so, so good. Totally different from anything I’ve had before. We started with the fried yucca, topped with pickles. Super tasty.

We split a chickpea curry and the steamed fish with appam. So flavorful and the spice level made my mouth hum, without being overpowering. Everything was so fresh. The appam was pillowy and a great pair with the spicy curry.

They have a no tipping policy and you order from your phone at the table. The servers were really helpful and answered a lot of questions.

I want to go back for lunch and try more of the menu.

Had a good meal at Thattu recently. Perhaps it was a case of having too high expectations, but I wasn't wowed overall. Short version: a couple of dishes were outstanding and the sauces and seasonings were great across the board, but the meal was held back thanks to some foods being sauced and seasoned weren't great. My non-alcoholic drink was exceptional and the desserts were definitely not for me (or the two people I was with).


The Kerala Fried Chicken Bites had great intense seasoning but it was too much for the little bites. I'd be curious to try the chicken sandwich and see how the more balanced version is.


Beet puff was allegedly spicy but I didn't get any heat. It was fine.


Eggplant Theeyal: roasted eggplant, confit pearl onions & cherry tomatoes, coconut tamarind sauce. The veggies were fine, but the sauce was excellent.


Pork Chop Peralan: Bone-In Pork Chop, tangy peralan gravy, coconut braised collard greens, yucca cake. Looks like a work of art and had fantastic flavors. Fell short because it was just not a particularly good piece of pork.


Kadala Curry: black chickpeas, roasted coconut gravy. I'm an avowed meat eater and I thought this was the dish of the night. I'd eat it again and again. So. Much. Flavor.


You can't tell by looking at it, but this is the Malabar Chicken Biriyani - super flavorful chunks of bone in chicken. Another home run. Unfortunately it appears this was a special.


I'm sure there are people who would love the payasam but there were three of us and we didn't finish the one relatively small bowl.


I can't remember what this was and the desserts aren't on the online menu. Like the pork chop, it's pretty to look at and the flavors were good, but this was another dessert that didn't go over well. I'm pretty sure those are fried plantains that were somehow not sweet at all.


The Masala Biscuit was more savory than sweet. I think it could be good with a cup of coffee or tea, but as a dessert it was a miss.

I didn't take a picture of my drink, the Malabar Ginger Coolerm but the black pepper & cardamom brew with ginger, mint, lime, and fresh fruit was absolutely phenomenal.

The service was very good, the space is nice, and the clientele was extremely diverse- leaned slightly young and Indian, but there were white and Black diners and there were families and some couples who appeared to be in their 60s. And the douchebag demographic was represented by the guy proudly standing by his McLaren outside the front door.

Overall, I'd say it's definitely worth a shot. I'd like to try the chicken sandwich and I'd order the Kadala curry by the bucket if I could. Skip dessert.

MarlaCollins'Husband wrote:Had a good meal at Thattu recently. Perhaps it was a case of having too high expectations, but I wasn't wowed overall. Short version: a couple of dishes were outstanding and the sauces and seasonings were great across the board, but the meal was held back thanks to some foods being sauced and seasoned weren't great. My non-alcoholic drink was exceptional and the desserts were definitely not for me (or the two people I was with).

Thanks, for posting about the meal we had. Overall, I felt the same way, though we differ a bit on some of the specifics. The highs were high but I agree that there was some unevenness among the dishes. I'd never been before and had only eaten their food one other time, back when they had a stall at Politan Row.

I enjoyed the chicken bites (intense but satisfyingly so) and the biryani the most. Beet puff was just too sweet for me and ate like a dessert (and was a better dessert than any of the desserts we did order). The eggplant was the biggest disappointment for me because, as you said, the veg itself didn't rise to the level of the tamarind sauce (seemed very dry and possibly overcooked). I enjoyed the chickpeas but maybe I'm more of a traditionalist than I realized because it mostly had me wishing for a tried and true version of chana masala.

Drinks/cocktails, service, vibe and overall feel of the place were outstanding. I wasn't sure if I'd like the order & pay by mobile device set-up but it worked well because the FOH staff was present, knowledgeable and helpful. So, the human element never felt lacking. I like that there's no tipping and, at the end of our meal, it was great to not have to wait for the bill or to pay the bill.

I'm really rooting for these guys because I feel like the restaurant serves distinctive food and also has intention and purpose. In those ways, I think they separated themselves from the pack, and I also felt very connected to Thattu during our meal.

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I went not long after it opened even though it's kind of a pain to get to by public transit. I had somewhat high expectations from the praise for its food stand and it did not meet them. I recall that eggplant dish being subpar with a tamarind sauce that was bitter and weirdly cooked vegetables. The signature coriander curry, that I believe made them famous, was bland. I did enjoy the steamed fish and had similar feeling about the chickpea curry being merely OK.

I really wanted a unique and elevated Indian experience, but I did not get it.

ronnie_suburban wrote:

MarlaCollins'Husband wrote:I enjoyed the chickpeas but maybe I'm more of a traditionalist than I realized because it mostly had me wishing for a tried and true version of chana masala.

This is neither a defense of the restaurant nor a critique of Ronnie or other recent posters on their meals, but when reviewing those posts, and the quoted line from Ronnie's response in particular, I couldn't help but wonder: are the assessments being made unduly and/or unfairly comparing Thattu dishes to their (relative) northern Indian analogues? While it's certainly understandable given the prominence and accessibility of the latter, it also needs to be acknowledged that they are very different paradigms of cooking, especially when it comes to the sharpness of sauces and the sweetness of desserts. In other words, paysum is not going to be exactly like kheer; fried plantains are not going to be comparable to barfi or other northern sweets, much less the much sweeter plantain variations of the Afro-Carib diaspora.

I should note my own biases/limitations here: my wife's family is from Kerala, so the home cooking I've grown accustomed to often is quite similar to what others experienced: some brilliant sauces and spicing but what my western-honed palate thinks is lousy cooking of proteins. Now, I haven't been to Thattu since May, and I have not ordered dessert there, but my experience there--again, shaped from the perspective I have--is that Margaret is taking the more focused and nuanced approach you'd expect from a contemporary restaurant and applying it to these foodways, with what I think are really promising results. (That said, Semma in NYC is two levels up from that and quite brilliant.)

OK, so in the spirit of posting more, I can describe my visit here earlier in the summer.

The thing I walked away thinking was, "Wow, so much flavor packed into this food!"

I think the fried chicken bites were the best example of this. While upthread, someone thought it was a detriment that they were so flavor-packed, I thought it was a strength.

I also very much enjoyed the chickpea curry and thought the Peralan pork chop was also very flavorful. I didn't notice subpar meat sourcing or cookery on my visit.

I think we did get a dish like the eggplant but it seemed to be plated differently. I don't remember it all that well. Which probably means it was not among my favorites.

I think we also got both pictured desserts (the banana/plantain bites and the biscuit). The lack of sweetness didn't bother me in the least. Biting into the biscuit in particular, I appreciated the savory spices there as well.

I should mention that I really did *not* care for the beverage service. Neither cocktail we ordered was particularly memorable. Those were pretty much the main misses for me.

So I'm not keeping score, but I probably differed on almost every take delivered just above (lol). Just another data point, but I welcome Thattu to Avondale and will stop in again. Since the menu doesn't seem to change all that often, it may be a bit before I do, but I will return.

The Mods should consider changing the header if possible to Thattu in Avondale or something.

I am really looking forward to going there soon with a Keralite. Their dishes in Politan Row spot were uniformly excellent so In have great hopes.

Indianbadger wrote:The Mods should consider changing the header if possible to Thattu in Avondale or something.

Done.

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for the Moderators

chezbrad wrote:I should note my own biases/limitations here: my wife's family is from Kerala, so the home cooking I've grown accustomed to often is quite similar to what others experienced: some brilliant sauces and spicing but what my western-honed palate thinks is lousy cooking of proteins. Now, I haven't been to Thattu since May, and I have not ordered dessert there, but my experience there--again, shaped from the perspective I have--is that Margaret is taking the more focused and nuanced approach you'd expect from a contemporary restaurant and applying it to these foodways, with what I think are really promising results. (That said, Semma in NYC is two levels up from that and quite brilliant.)

That's really interesting. I will say if that pork chop had been a juicier, more flavorful piece of meat, I think my entire recap would have been different.

Semma. My goodness what a spectacular meal I had there from start to finish. Genuinely had me start looking into a trip to India.

I was back a couple of weeks ago for dinner.

I almost didn't post because I thought the meal was very similar to my first one: full of flavor and very tasty.

Some dishes were the same as the last visit. The Kerala fried chicken bites have to be one of the best things I've tasted this year and it will be hard not to order them every time. We also had a beet puff starter. I thought this seemed pretty bland, but it was also the next thing I tasted after the chicken and may have suffered from a comparatively lower spice profile.

We had the Pork Chop Peralan and the Chettinad Pepper Chicken for later courses. I think the Chettinad was a new to the menu since my last trip. The only other place I've had this dish is from The Spice Room (a preparation I also really enjoy). I think Thattu's version had a bit more of the fruitiness from the pepper.

I know others haven't been pleased with the pork chop. I thought it was just as good as I remembered and pared really well with the greens and crispy yucca cake.

So I'm not sure this is a great post because it doesn't offer a lot of new information. But I really enjoy this place. The small menu doesn't seem to change over all that often but contains some absolute winners. And there are still dishes I've yet to try. For these reasons, I see myself returning again. I'm glad to have these preparations and these flavors nearby.