Kerala Kitchen — Restaurant in Dublin

For Indian food that's beyond your textbook Irish Indian shop, 5 stars. For a foreigner, don't hold out on the 2 stars off please, dine in or takeaway, credit to the chefs!

The atmosphere of this place was great. And old house converted into a cozy intimate setting with all its creaks. The seating is a mix of benches and couple separate chairs and tables to seat 15-20 i think. They've got fixed menu with a special of the day. Also your typical drinks menu too. Cutlery and plates are that rustic steel which goes with the theme of the lighting and setting.

Food portions were nice and you can either go with 1 bread and some rice or 3 breads for 2 for a decent meal if ordering dishes besides biryani. The food itself was yum! Healthy change to the typical korma, butter chicken, tikka masala copy paste shops out there.

We had the black dal and goan chicken with the chicken biryani. Dal was closest to dal makhni, the goan, bursting with flavours and alive in your mouth and the biryani was reminiscent of a south Indian biryani (one off, differs from each region)

Now, the cons of Kerala kitchen. I think this place took the name literally. As a keralite, the only thing Kerala was the kitchen staff maybe, the folks at reception and maybe 2-3 dishes. Kerala is a one part of South India. Indian cuisine is quite diverse and keralite food is dying of recognition in Ireland.

Expecting some menus and decors or wait staff from kerala was a disappointment. I ran down from seating to chat in Malayalam (language in kerala) with the staff manning the phones to discuss kerala food and options rather than having a convo about it with the waiters and be thrilled with various menu options. What i thought was finally a representation of this cuisine of Indian food, away from the stereotypes was short lived and we settled for the goan dish, Indian dal and Tamil biryani. A quintessential for keralite menu is food like porotta, beef fry, appam, fish moilee, puttu.. something to excite the various wonderful flavours but we had to resort to the usual Indian (with a twist), a couple South Indian dishes with your guaranteed favourite North Indian cuisine.

If you're in the mood for brilliant, delicious food and good atmosphere, Kerala kitchen is right up your alley with affordable prices too. If you want to experience the menu and immerse for an experience from God's own country a.k.a Kerala, humbly look elsewhere. Nonetheless, support such places for trying to keep up in this Irish economy. Much love, nanni!

P.S. for inspiration on modern keralite food joints outside kerala, have a look at Kerala cafe chain in...

We tried Kerala Kitchen on Baggot Street for the first time last night, we were long time regulars at their Stoneybatter location so we had high hopes. We opted to get an order to go, & to our disappointment when we got home (6 minutes later) the order was cold (packaging unsuitable for takeaway) & we were given vegan items (which looked & smelled like they'd been prepared hours before) instead of the chicken dishes we wanted to try. The entire order was wet, condensation inside the poor packaging turned salad items slimey which coated everything with an unpleasant funk. It was awful. The Biryani's rice was tasteless, the sauce overly sweet & poorly balanced, it contained just 2 & 1/2 pieces of gristley brown "chicken" & the portion size for €16 was straight up mean, the tikka was also obviously made with low quality chicken off cuts, lacked flavour & the salad slime's odour made everything so much worse. The garlic naan was burnt, flavourless & simultaneously wet from condensation & dry to taste - an unusual combination. We didn't try the potato/cumin abominations, they straight up stunk. Needless to say, dinner was binned, & we resorted to cooking a Tesco finest pizza I had stashed in the freezer. The fact Wormy looking carrot peices will haunt me & the smell of those potatoes (see picture) lingered in the compost bin overnight filling our utility with a disturbing stench it's safe to say we won't be eating or recommending Kerala Kitchen's once wonderful food again.

We did contact the store but we received no reply. I don't think they're concerned about customer service, which is a red flag in itself.

Avoid this place folks, it's horrendous, there are far better Indian...

Really nice curry house. Been here 2 nights on the trot. Very quirky but very nice.

Last night the starter came with the main. The same happened tonight, so I (confrontionally) asked why, ready for a battle. The waiter diffused it with a simple “that’s what we do”!! Seemed hard to argue with at the time but then I thought it kind of defeats the point of calling it a starter.

But then I thought about it and I suppose I’m in Dublin eating from a Keralan restaurant. Least I can do is cut them some slack over the translations.

Whilst I’m at it, they sat me against the wall at a two seater table but unfortunately I shared a bench seat with the next table. On which sat a very animated, young, plump Irish lady. I was being rocked back and forth as she gestured wildly. So not wanting that for the next hour, I switched to the seat facing the wall. The waiter was was having none of it and compensated by making sure he bumped into me every time he walked by or served an adjacent table. Probably paranoid but it did make me feel that maybe in Kerala you get bumped a lot when you eat; and once I had convinced myself of that, I was happy.

Curry was actually really, really good and the service was spot on, but what made it unique, was an experience that made me smile - several times. Can’t knock it.

You can go to McDonalds or Pizza Express and they get it right every single time - so boring though. Kerala Kitchen is another league. Great food, great service and quirky subtle non invasive...