Malabar Coast — Restaurant in Santa Clara

This is our first visit to Malabar Coast and the pleasant experience we had with the restaurant and the server Simran were amazing. So we will be surely visiting again.

Malabar coast specializes in Kerala style cuisine. We ordered Ginger Lime, Egg Roast, Veg Varutharachatu, Two Kerala Style Porotta and Rice Payasam.

The ginger lime was probably the best drink we have had at $ 3. The similar drink at Jamba juice was around $ 10.

Egg Roast was deliciously spicy yet not hot (Chili) at all. It tasted awesome with the Porotta. The Veg Varutharachatu was coconut based gravy and was mild. They can prepare it medium or hot based on your choice. I believe that a great cook can make any gravy tasty without adding too much of chili or spices and chefs here seem to follow this doctrine.

We added Ghee Rice and it was peppered with ghee, cashew pieces and fried onion. The dish is amazing on its own and can be had with any gravy to enhance the taste.

When the Rice payasam came in hot, we were happy to learn that is made with jaggery and not with sugar. Obviously it was delicious and we added few roasted cashews from ghee rice and taste multiplied. May be they can also add roasted cashews to the payasam on their own.

We paid the bill and found that we were not charged for payasam. We brought it to attention of the server - Simran and she was very gracious about it. She said she forgot to add it and now it is complementary. Simran is a young girl who will go places with life with this award winning attitude.

Lots of good wishes to Malabar coast and hope more and more...

With a place named Malabar Coast I expected it to lead with Kerala dishes like puttu, thoran, avial. Instead I got a random mishmash of some Kerala and the usual suspects from the North. The prices were extremely reasonable in this time and age that we are living in and so I decided to order.

The ambiance was annoying. There was a youtube video of a crackling fireplace. Idk what the intended mood was, but the place did not look like a ski lodge cabin that needed a skeuomorphic fireplace. In the background, the Uber Eats chime went off constantly, like every 5s. I felt like an extra in a scifi movie given that I was all alone in the restaurant.

The parotta was dry and crumbled as I handled it. This left me sad. The mushroom stew was passable, but I wasn't going to Whatsapp call my mom and show her how good the food was "here in the US" with it. As a vegetarian, the biriyani choices were commendable - veg, egg, paneer, gongura, but also, why so many choices? What was ulavacharu biriyani doing hiding in this mix? Was there rasam in the biriyani or a collab with the namesake restaurant nearby?

Confused, I ordered the gongura biriyani. The portions were generous. A small African nation could come out of famine with it. But it was heaped so much with the gongura masala at the bottom that I ended up dumping the regular unspiced rice onto my pate and then had to add the masala to make it what the menu claimed it to be. Sadly, the tangy gongura was at odds with the other spices and left me incomplete and with a to-go box filled with my...

We were visiting California and decided to try this place for Kerala dish based on the reviews. So we stopped by at this place for lunch (June 19th 2025). The ambience was good and plenty of parking available. The menu does have Kerala dishes with a mix/match of various North Indian and bit of south Indian biriyanis. We ordered Veg Cutlet, Kerala Porotta and Green peas masala. The cutlet looked good until we cut it open and realized some shredded pieces which looked like fish. It did not taste like veg cutlet eventhough there were mashed potatoes along with something else shredded and mixed in it (may be they used the same oil which they used to fry fish). They did not provide any sauce with the cutlet and we had to ask for it. We asked the waitress to confirm if the cutlet is Veg and she did confirm that it is veg. We couldn't eat it because too much fish flavor in it. Kerala Porotta and Green peas masala was good, even though the porotta was not fresh and looked like frozen one. After we finished eating, we had some left over curry which we boxed to take home. However when we left the restaurant, we forgot to take the boxed left over and we came back to the restaurant with in 5 mins to take it. By the time the waitress trashed the container. Who will box left over if they don't want to take it. She could've waited for some time before trashing it. Absolutely no common sense. Never visiting this restaurant again. That one star rating is for Green peas masala which...