Tomatoes & Turmeric

A dinner party series explores the delicious connections between India and the American South.

- Chandra Ram

I INDIA CAN FEEL LIKE a world apart from the South, but it shares a number of qualities with the region, like hot, humid weather; an appreciation for music and the arts; and a sense of hospitality that tends toward joyful abundance. This overlap provided the inspiration for Brown in the South, a collaborative dinner series put together by seven Southern chefs of Indian and Sri Lankan descent (pictured, opposite). The dinners celebrate ingredients common to both Mississippi and Mumbai, like okra, shrimp, chiles, rice, and tomatoes, with menus featuring spice-laden stews, crunchy fritters, simmered vegetables, fire-roasted meats, and fried cakes doused in syrup.

Vishwesh Bhatt, chef of Snackbar in Oxford, Mississippi, and Meherwan Irani, whose empire includes Chai Pani in Asheville, North Carolina, and Decatur, Georgia, and Botiwalla in Atlanta, conceived the idea of Brown in the South at the 2017 Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium while discussing how the diversity of the South inspired their cooking. “We wondered how a bunch of Indian chefs ended up in the South, why it was easier for us to find our roots here,” Irani says. “That led to a conversation about identity and how it feels to be an Indian chef living and cooking in the South.”

The first of the series took place at Irani’s Decatur location of Chai Pani, where the chefs welcomed a sold-out crowd with Indian snacks and cocktails. Guests sat at long tables and dug into a reimagined Southern meat-and-three dinner of meatloaf topped with tart pickled apple achar, peppery Kerala-style fried chicken, and masala-spiced shrimp with up, an Indian semolina dish that stood in for grits.