Chettinad cuisine is among India’s spiciest, and Anjappar’s Chettinad chicken masala, chunks of tender bone-in chicken bathed in a gorgeous brick red sauce fragrant with cinnamon, cloves, cumin, and especially black pepper, certainly lives up to the billing, leaving lips a tingle and tongue on fire. Palak paneer soothed the heat. With a good solid spinach flavour and plenty of milky paneer cheese, this pureed vegetable dish is reassuringly olive in color (other versions around town are sometimes a shocking – and suspicious – shade of jade green. Sometimes a dal is just a dal, but not as Anjappar makes it: rich with legume flavour, featuring al dente yellow lentils that have been pulled off the stove before they turn to an indefinable mush, and studded with bits of chopped pegaga that add an intriguing hint of vegetal bitterness, and just a little spicy from whole dried chillies.

Address: 136, Jalan Tun Sambantham, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: 03-2273 3812

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