Chicago’s Coach Home is a 22-seat tasting menu restaurant that goals to coach patrons on South Indian delicacies. Helmed by James Beard Award-nominated chef Zubair Mohajir, Coach Home serves dishes from Mohajir’s house in Chennai and throughout the South Asian subcontinent. Mohajir’s menu combines recipes which might be a whole bunch of years outdated with substances that clients could also be extra conversant in. “It helps our visitor join with one thing they’re conversant in with regards to the feel of meals,” says Mohajir of his South Indian khichdi, made with rice and lentils. “However then on the identical time, we’re simply blasting them with one thing that they’ve by no means had earlier than.”
Mohajir sees his function at Coach Home as increasing individuals’s understanding of Indian meals. “I all the time joke that on this a part of the world, we’re nonetheless residing in ‘butter hen world,’” Mohajir says. “Butter hen is the primary introductory dish for lots of people with regards to Indian meals.” However at Coach Home, dishes like his gentle shell crab chaat (crispy fried gentle shell crab served with yogurt and mint chutney) and meen molee, a spicy seafood dish with coconut milk, ginger, garlic, serrano, and quite a lot of spices, take heart stage.
Coach Home’s dishes present a snapshot of South Indian historical past. The duck Numidian recipe, for instance, comes straight from a 1,000-year-old recipe that was handwritten by an unknown individual, discovered years later, and translated by historians. The outcome, a closely spiced sauce that pairs completely with purple khichdi and duck. “Once you check out the sauce,” Mohajir says, “it actually tells you ways lengthy we’ve been speaking the world over as people.”
Watch the most recent episode of Mise En Place to study extra about how Coach Home is bringing South Indian delicacies to Chicago.
