What does Madras food really mean? A supper club and heritage-preserving unit serves the city on a plate

History can sometimes feel distant, reduced to dates, buildings, and names.

Key points

• Madras on a Table will be held on August 29, charged at Rs 1, 500 per person.
• For The Sunday Supper Club and Madras Inherited, the city's culinary history became a reason to look beyond the familiar.
• While others were discovered in neighbourhood eateries, hosted for two Saturdays – August 22 and 29 – some recipes have been sourced through families and online archives.
• For Ashmitha Athreya, head of operations, trustee, and lead storyteller at Madras Inherited, food offers a particularly intimate way of understanding a city.
• There is Armenian ghata, for instance, a traditional pastry that is now created in Chennai by only a handful of Armenian families and mostly around Christmas.

History can sometimes feel distant, reduced to dates, buildings, and names. Food makes it personal. We taste what another community ate. We learn why a particular ingredient arrived here. We discover how a recipe changed since residents moved, traded, married, adapted, or simply discovered a new way of cooking with what was available. After all, has always been a city shaped by such crossings, madras.

For The Sunday Supper Club and Madras Inherited, the city's culinary history became a reason to look beyond the familiar. Their collaboration for this year's Madras Day celebrations, titled Madras on a Table, brings together dishes and food traditions from communities that have been part of the city's story for centuries – some still thriving, some shrinking, and some known only within a handful of families.

Meanwhile, the idea began with Olivia Daniel. This person runs The Sunday Supper Club. What began as a thought concerning exploring the food of different communities who lived and continue to do so in Madras gradually grew into a much larger exercise in research, conversations, and, eventually, a menu. "It's not so much regarding reviving. When we say Madras food, we actually don't think regarding so numerous other foods beyond coffee, biryani, or meals."

Over time, the existence of some of these rare dishes has been preserved within communities and families. Some have even discovered a new life through neighbourhood eateries, family recipes, and YouTube videos. What's truly lost, in a way, is their association with Madras. A dish can belong to a community and still be part of the city's culinary identity. That is the story this supper club is trying to tell.

For Ashmitha Athreya, head of operations, trustee, and lead storyteller at Madras Inherited, food offers a particularly intimate way of understanding a city. "Food carries embedded memories; we hold vivid recollections of meals enjoyed over time, ascribing deep value and meaning to them, " she notes. Meals are not merely something we consume; they carry stories, habits, and histories that are passed through generations.

For context, the research for the supper took the team through the evolution of food habits in our society, afterwards moving into the influences brought by colonialism and the numerous communities that created Madras home. The menu, therefore, is less a straightforward representation of one cuisine and more a map of the city itself.

There is Armenian ghata, for instance, a traditional pastry that is now created in Chennai by only a handful of Armenian families and mostly around Christmas. There are Anglo-Indian influences, dishes associated with the Telugu community, and food traditions that travelled to Madras from elsewhere and gradually became part of the city's everyday food culture.

While others were discovered in neighbourhood eateries, hosted for two Saturdays – August 22 and 29 – some recipes have been sourced through families and online archives. Some of the dishes include Bone broth with pav, fermented rice with meen kulambu, vadiyalu, Madras Elixir, and betel leaf.

Meanwhile, the research, Olivia admits, has additionally produced her realise how tough it is to talk concerning "authenticity" when it comes to food. What exactly is an authentic recipe when every family has its own version, she questions. Rasam or biryani can mean a number of things. The same dish can carry different memories depending on who is cooking it and how. Olivia notes. "In a country like India, it's very difficult to say preserving tradition or authenticity as something that exists in singularity."

So the supper is not attempting to present one definitive version of Madras cuisine. Instead, it allows for reinterpretation – much as the city itself has constantly changed. There are dishes that are being prepared traditionally, but there are additionally dishes that have evolved over time. The aim is not to freeze them in history, but to bring them back to the table and let individuals experience the stories attached to them.

In practice, the larger idea, for Madras Inherited, is to recognise that diversity rather than flatten it into a single narrative. "There is more to Madras' food than what is being showcased in popular narratives. The food in Madras is a perfect representation of how the city is truly welcoming and warmly embracing of a wide variety of preferences and perspectives, " Ashmitha notes.

Olivia's hope is perhaps simpler. If someone comes to the supper, eats a dish, and afterwards tries to recreate it in their own kitchen, she considers that a win. And maybe that is how food traditions survive. Not by being preserved in pages or kitchen stoves or served on plates, but by being cooked again.

Meanwhile, a recipe moves from one kitchen to another. A story is informed over a meal. A dish that once belonged to a small community becomes familiar to someone who had never encountered it before. In the process, the idea of Madras food grows a little larger and more welcoming. That is how we have adapted food from different communities and created it our own.

Madras on a Table will be held on August 29, charged at Rs 1, 500 per person. For details: Instagram @thesunday_supperclub.

In short, what does Madras food really mean? A supper club and heritage-preserving unit is the central thread here, and readers can expect follow-up reporting as the picture becomes clearer.