Regi Mathew

Coming Up

The discipline in Regi Mathew’s cooking is rooted in formal training and hotel service. He began in 1993 as a trainee at Taj West End in Bengaluru, and that early floor-level experience sits alongside study at Mahatma Gandhi University, IHMCT & AN, Trivandrum, and XLRI Jamshedpur. The sequence matters: kitchen training, academic structure, and management grounding combine here to explain a practice that values control, clarity, and repeatable standards.

Where They Are Now

Kappa Chakka Kandhari in Chennai is the current frame for Regi Mathew’s work as Culinary Director and Founder. The restaurant gives his cooking a place to present Kerala food with regional specificity intact, while still speaking to diners outside the culture it comes from. That balance—keeping the center while widening the audience—is the practical problem his kitchen addresses. The method shows most clearly in two named dishes. Pazham Nanachathu is described as a zero waste Syrian Christian dessert, and that alone signals a kitchen logic built on use, restraint, and inherited domestic practice. Meen Nellika Masala is a pan-seared fish made by a tribal community in Agasthiyar forest, placing technique and place in the same frame. Together they show how Mathew works: not by separating restaurant service from regional memory, but by carrying one into the other without flattening either.

Signature

Regi's signature dishes include Pazham Nanachathu and Meen Nellika Masala.

In Their Words “My vision has always been to Kerala cuisine to global prominence, preserving its authenticity while introducing it to a wider audience.” “I wanted to recreate the slow-cooked home food of Kerala, the food cooked by women every day, with great thought and care.”

Honors

Regi Mathew has received Zee Zest Unlimit Awards — Chef Of The Year (2024). No specific award or dated prize is identified for Mathew.