Aryaas Elite Restaurant: Chemba Rice Meals

Recently I started seeing this relatively new vegetarian restaurant show up in the food delivery apps… Its been a while since my favourite “Aariyas” place in Kaniyapuram stopped showing up and I had been looking searching for it whenever I craved for a nice dosa and thats how I started seeing this Aryaas Elite Restaurant in the apps… So, during the last time I ordered food from the place for my parents, I noticed that they have what they called as the Chemba Rice Meals… So, wanted to try that and here we are…

There is a small backstory which is that both me and my mom had been missing a vegetarian meals option from another “Aariyas” like place for quite some time that came with the Chemba Rice… So, when I saw “Chemba Rice Meals” in the menu, I just had to try… So, the parcel arrived as can be seen in the pic above, all packed in foil pouches accompanied by a Banana Leaf to serve and eat… The following pics show the meals after I served it on the leaf the best way I could think of…

So, the meals consisted of the Chemba Rice, Parippu Curry, Sambar, Pulissery, Rasam, Green Beans Thoran, Olan, Lime Pickle, Curd, Appalam and Palada Payasam… Please note that what you see in the pics is more or less half of what arrived (except for the Appalam, Payasam and Pickle) and if you are the carb police, who thinks thats too much rice for one person to eat, please note that the chemba rice you see here was of the kind whose grains are like half the size of the regular “vadi” kind that we see mostly and that leaf was relatively small sized too when compared to the leaf that usually comes with Sadyas…

Anyways, coming to the taste, I must say that I did get reminded of the meals from that other place and the only problem I felt was that I felt that everything needed a bit more salt… So, I sprinkled some myself… The rice was perfectly cooked for me as it just had that right bouncy firmness to the grains… I was hoping for the Parippu Curry to be the Travancore style green kind but turned out to be the kind thats seen in North Kerala, made with the Yellow Dal thats similar in taste to the North Indian Dal Curry… Sambar was nice and had the flavours of vegetables in them… I just wish they used a bit more of the Asafoetida in it… Pulissery had just the right amount of sourness in its taste and had a rich taste of Yogurt and Coconut along with of-course the oil and Mustard seeds… Rasam felt like it was made with Pepper as the main seasoning along with Tomatoes, Coriander and Mustard… The Curd and the Appalam were like any other…

The Lime Pickle was again like any of the other spicy and sour paste that comes in sealed branded packets that we see being included in meals and biriyani takeaways in most restaurants… The Olan tasted exactly like the one I had from that other place except that the Pumpkin used was not julienned but rather chopped into chunks… I also felt that it had a bit more creamier coconut milk used too… The Beans Thoran was quite flavourful too with the taste of Coconut, Mustard and a stronger presence of Turmeric than usual… Last but not least was the Palada Payasam… I felt that it was made using Maida (Refined Flour) based Ada rather than Rice flour… But as far as Payasams that usually come with these kind of meals go, I must say that it was one fine Payasam indeed with just the right amount of sweetness and flavour of Cardamom in it…

Thats it for now… I must say, I really did enjoy this meal that I think is a very good option of Kerala – Tamil fusion style meals for vegetarians… I am hoping to have my mom try this soon… Hopefully this will be our goto vegetarian meal option from now on… Feel free to check it out and let me know in the comments section below…