On Pongal day, this Chennai restaurant introduces patrons to eight varieties of the breakfast dish

It’s January, and if you’re in Tamil Nadu that can mean only one thing: Pongal season. The state’s annual harvest festival (it usually comes with a week-long holiday) is celebrated with one of its most-popular breakfast dishes, Pongal. Eponymous with the festival itself, Pongal is commonly made breakfast dish prepared with rice, lentil and a generous helping of ghee. The dish is boiled and served on the festival to symbolise prosperity and abundance, while its rich, creamy texture and simple spices like black pepper and cumin make for the ultimate soul-food to kickstart festivities.

The dish has two types – Kaara Pongal, which is a savoury version of the dish, and Sakkarai Pongal, a sweeter, delectable and more festive of the traditional dish that is made with jaggery, cashews and raisins. This year, Chennai-based chain of restaurants, Geetham, decided to serve up eight varieties of the dish. That’s how its eight-Pongal platter came to be.

Serving up Pongal varieties like Pudhina Pongal, made with mint, cashews and Moong Dal, and a crowd favourite like the sweet-tasting Kavuni Karuppati Pongal, known by its characteristic black rice, jaggery and coconut, Geetham’s Pongal platter deep-dives into just how diverse and eclectic the breakfast dish can get.

Also read | Pongal dishes to prepare and share with family and friends 

“We’re all about customer satisfaction and this year, we planned eight varieties of Pongal, with rice, lentils and millets to celebrate Pongal with our customers,” says Murali N Bhat, Geetham’s founder. “Surely, it’s a tribute to our farmers too,” he adds, referring to the millets in each variety, as a nod to the recent focus on millets across the globe, India included.

Murali and his daughter, Akshaya, have steered Geetham at the helm ever since the chain began taking form and shape less than three years ago. The Pongal platter idea, they say, originated from the idea of the restaurant celebrating festivals across South India, with its patrons.

“My personal favourite is the Kavuni Karupatti Pongal because black rice takes us back to our roots,” says Akshaya, “But I think our customers will also enjoy the Pudhina Pongal, the Akkaravadisal (made with raw rice, jaggery and saffron), and the Maapilai Samba Arisi Pongal (yellow Moong Dal, Ghee and Cashewnuts mixed with a native variety of red rice rich in iron).”

The other Pongal dishes on the eight-Pongal spread are Varagu Arisi Pongal (kodo millet is its chief ingredient), Godhumai Rava Pongal (broken-wheat semolina), Ven Pongal (split yellow mung dal and butter) and Samai Arisi Pongal (foxtail millet).

There’s no doubt that Pongal is a festival of prosperity and abundance, and that only means eight different kinds of Pongal to symbolise exactly that, can go a long way in celebrating.