Food on a Kerala Houseboat

Kerala houseboats serve Kerala Cuisine, as the idea is to give you the local flavour and experience. However, keeping today’s requirements certain customizations can be done against request. You have to ensure that the request is placed at the time of booking.Food choice is between vegetarian and non-vegetarian Kerala cuisine. By default, it’s a non-vegetarian menu so if you are a vegetarian please intimate them at the times of booking as last-minute changes cannot be made on houseboats. Customizations like Halal food or Jain food is easy to do and does not cost anything extra. However specific requests like seafood on the menu, extra items or items to be procured from the outside market needs to be paid for separately as per your requirements.

For a regular houseboat tour the meal spread is as indicated below. It’s an all-round experience giving you an insight into how the local flavours are distributed and how healthy the food is, especially the breakfast. Some of the delicacies to look out for are Appam with stew, Idiyappam with mutta curry, Puttu with Kadala for breakfast. In the main course you need to try Alappuzha Fish Curry, Kozhi Varathacharacha curry, Sambhar, Avial, Thoran, Theeyal, Moru Kootan, Pachadi, Paysams, Pradamans and more. It’s amazing to see the wide variety and richness in diet patterns.

The lunch is served by 1 pm and consists of a few varieties of vegetarian items like sambar, thoran, avaial, pachadi, pickle, pappad, rice, fried fish and a non veg curry besides a dessert. The tea coffee and snack around 4 pm and generally it’s the famous local banana fritters as the snack. The dinner is served by 8 pm and it consists of vegetable dishes like dal, mixed vegetable sabzi, chapati, curry, pickle, papad and one non veg item besides assorted fruits. The breakfast is served by 8 am and it consists of local steamed items with curry and bread with butter/jam plus tea/coffee

Apart from these if you are having parties or functions on the boats then the culinary world opens up. There are boats which can accommodate 20 to 200 people at a time and private functions like engagements, reunions, weddings, meetings etc can be arranged and tailormade to your specifications. No houseboat on the backwaters has a licence to sell non-alcoholic beverages but you do have the option to bring your own and consume it in privacy. On the backwaters you do get the option of buying “toddy” the naturally fermented coconut sap which is a sweet and effervescent drink and remains unmatched for its amazing freshness and flavour. explore Alleppey