A little note, tucked in a blue windowpane, at Blue Elephant, on KP Vallon Road, promises soul food. The smoked paprika cauliflower in caper berry sauce —a perfectly done head of cauliflower set on a bed of creamy sauce— is that promise kept. The delicate balance of flavours, none palate numbing - just simple comfort food. And for the vegetarian, a blessing too.
For Sapna Anand and Oneal Sabu, what they serve, and everything that goes into the food, at their eatery is very important. Hence also the no fries, no ketchup rule.
“It took some convincing but Sapna came around eventually,” says Oneal, lawyer and food enthusiast. The kitchen is Sapna’s domain, while Oneal handles everything else. They also take turns being the head and the heart of running a business.
Oneal, thanks to his love of food combined with the experience of living in Kochi, knows what might work or not, while Sapna brings in her culinary expertise.
The menu is the result of intense brainstorming. He recounts the discussion on vindaloo, “Sapna said beef vindaloo, I said no. It would cause the inevitable comparison with the local beef vindaloo, instead why not a mutton vindaloo?”
Malaysia-based, Sapna is a Le Cordon Bleu trained pastry chef and an Indian-specialty restaurant consultant. She has to her credit a couple of cookbooks and a TV show. Having lived in Goa, before she moved abroad, her cooking has Goan influences.
They met when Sapna was filming her television show in Fort Kochi in late 2017. Oneal travelled to Kuala Lumpur, where Sapna lives with her husband and son. Many ideas later, they settled on opening a restaurant together. Sapna divides her time between Kochi and Kuala Lumpur.
Blue Elephant’s (BE) white interiors are cosy. From the outside its size, around 360 sq ft., begs the ‘hole in the wall’ description, but space is so managed that the 16 seater looks spacious. Plenty of natural light, a display for desserts, a book shelf, two community tables and a side table for four, yet spacious enough.
‘Share a table, make a friend’ suggests a note on one of the benches. “Haven’t we all shared table at Udupi joints? It is part of our culture...then why not?” Oneal asks.
A glass wall gives a peek into the tiny kitchen makes one wonder how it works. Oneal says, “People also constantly ask how we manage to work with such a small kitchen.” The day’s specials are announced on black board hung by the kitchen, the menu is handwritten...every little detail looked into.
Contrary to perception that BE serves only Goan fare, it also serves oriental and continental food too. The attempt, with this eatery also has been to introduce a different kind of eating out experience and food too. They have been pleasantly surprised to find senior citizens who have taken to their salads, “some started rather hesitantly, but now they are totally into salads.”
Sapna says this is the kind of food she cooks at home, cooking for her vegetarian husband ensured that she can rustle up a mean vegetarian dish. The Goan crispy chicken, a favourite with the kids, is something she used to make for her children.
“I make what I feel like...” says Sapna. This is how the soul, in their brand of soul food comes in.
The menu is curated largely based on what is available on a given day - especially seafood, which Oneal insists on picking from the Varapuzha fish market. Incidentally, this being the King Fish season, BE has incorporated it into the menu.
With their menu they constantly challenge the palate. Their Flying Fish for instance is simple. Neither over-spiced nor over fried beyond recognition, it is simply flavoured so that “one can taste the fish, sea fish has a sweet flavour which is often missed. It introduces the palate to simpler things sans complications,” Oneal says.
They source most of the other produce locally too from Thai basil, pandan leaves, and blue pea aka shankhupushpam (from Sapna’s mother’s garden) to chocolates. If not from Kochi then from nearby. “I make everything from scratch, the sauces and the extracts.”
The spread of desserts such as sweet pea flower panacotta, the humming bird, Pavlova, are delectable and a visual treat too.
“It is really about respecting food and keeping it simple,” Sapna and Oneal say about serving food for the soul.