I am usually content to let my editor assign me a restaurant or food festival to review but when I was invited to try out 20 varieties of pongal at Chennai’s The Raintree Hotel on Anna Salai, I dashed off to her to check if I could write about it. It seemed exactly the wacky innovation I would like to be part of… so off I went to the hotel where Chef Prabhakar had laid out a feast for preview. It being Pongal week to celebrate the harvest festival, the hotel is offering a special Pongal buffet till January 19 (Rs 650 for vegetarian, Rs 800 for non-vegetarian). Five of these creations will be on the menu every day.

There is a bright pink beetroot pongal , speckled with pepper, and a cream-coloured sweet potato one, apart from those made with oats, wheat and rice flakes. What makes them pongal and not, say, a pulav or “variety rice” — that wonderfully accommodative term for a rice recipe that has been value-added to in some way? A dish in which the rice and lentil and other ingredients have been mashed and blended, is Chef Prabhakar’s explanation.

They are pongal alright. Despite the additions and substitutions, they maintain at least a semblance of the original taste. The beetroot version genuinely tastes of the vegetable, the sweet potato version is flat. I could not discern vegetable, rice, spice or lentil there. The semiya pongal was slimy, there is no polite way to put it. The wheat and oats versions were better and the aval (rice flakes) adaptation was really light.

The star of the show was the kara pongal . Full of red chilli and pepper that a generous dose of ghee refused to tame, it is well worth a second or third helping. The inji puli interpretation comes a close second. The rasp of this ginger-tamarind chutney contrasts well with the mildness of the rice it topped. There was a buttery milagu pongal full of pepper, which reminded me of pasta. And contrary to what the name suggests, the kalkandu pongal is an ordinary, savoury one merely topped with sugar candy.

Among the sweet pongals , the Amrita Pongal, with fresh grapes, apple and banana, was the best. The date-and-honey version is forgettable. The chef mentioned a chakkavaratti (jackfruit jam) pongal , which was not served that day. Now I bet that would have been way wackier than the rest!

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