3 Best Restaurants in Southern Kerala, Kerala

Specialties at this chain restaurant (and this branch may be the best) include biryani, a flavorful rice cooked with chicken or mutton, and kuthu paratha, a Kerala Muslim delicacy of flatbread stuffed with minced fish and served from 4 pm onward.

The biryani is ready around noon and runs out by early evening, so make sure you get there on time.

Open all day, and with an open-air patio on the cliff, Coastal Kitchen may just be Varkala's best restaurant, serving all regional and Kerala specialties as well as vegetarian options like eggplant curry. Don’t miss the karuvepilai prawns, spicy and fried up with a lot of curry leaves, or the meen polichathu, fish fried in a wrapped banana leaf, or nadan meen charu, a local kind of fish curry; the desserts are good, too.

This excellent beachside seafood restaurant located at the Leela serves up freshly caught fish supplied by the local Kovalam fishermen. You can have the day’s fresh catch cooked in just about whatever style you like, including Indian, Chinese, Keralan, continental, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern; there are also vegetarian options available.