What You Eat on a Kerala Houseboat

The food is the most underrated part of a houseboat trip and the thing guests are least often told about in advance. It is not a buffet, it is not catered from shore, and it is not an afterthought: one of your three crew is a cook, and he is working in a galley at the back of the boat for most of the time you are aboard.

What is included

Every overnight booking includes four meals, with no menu to order from and nothing to pay on top:

• Lunch, served shortly after you board, usually while the boat is moving out through the canals
• Evening tea with snacks, mid-afternoon, often on the upper deck
• Dinner, cooked while the boat sits at anchor and served after dark
• Breakfast, the next morning before a 9:00 AM check-out

A day cruise includes lunch and tea. Mineral water runs throughout, and most boats bring a welcome drink — usually tender coconut — as you board.

A typical lunch

The default is a Kerala meal, served on the table rather than plated:

• Rice — often the short, nutty red matta rice rather than white
• A fish curry, cooked in coconut milk or in the sour, chilli-red meen style with kokum
• Fried fish, usually a whole fish, crusted with spice and shallow-fried
• Thoran — shredded vegetables stir-fried with grated coconut, mustard seed and curry leaf
• Sambar or avial, a lentil or coconut-and-vegetable stew
• Pappadam, pickle and curd

It arrives together and you help yourself. The fish depends on what was good at the market that morning, which is the honest answer to “what fish is it” — it is whatever the cook bought.

Dinner and breakfast

Dinner tends to be lighter and more North Indian in register, because that is what most guests expect at night: chapati or porotta, a chicken or vegetable curry, rice, and something fried. It is cooked at anchor, which means you can smell it for an hour before it arrives.

Breakfast is where Kerala shows off. Expect appam — a lacy, bowl-shaped rice pancake — with vegetable stew, or puttu, steamed rice flour layered with coconut, served with kadala black chickpea curry. Idli, dosa and omelette are standard alternatives. Fresh fruit and chai or filter coffee throughout.

If you eat one thing on the trip that you will look up afterwards, it will probably be the appam.

The karimeen question

Karimeen — pearl spot — is the signature fish of these backwaters, and it is the one guests ask for by name.

It is not automatically included. It is a premium fish, priced separately, and the usual arrangement is that the crew will stop at a village or a fisherman en route and buy it fresh if you want it. Expect to pay for it on top of the package.

Say so when you board, not at dinner. Once the boat anchors at 5:00 PM there is nowhere to buy anything. Prawns and crab work the same way.

Vegetarian, vegan and jain

All straightforward, and all better arranged in advance.

Kerala vegetarian cooking is excellent and not a substitution exercise — avial, thoran, olan, sambar and the whole breakfast range are vegetarian by default. A pure vegetarian boat is no trouble at all.

Vegan is easy on substance but needs flagging, because coconut milk is everywhere (helpful) and ghee appears in places you would not expect (less so). Jain — no onion, no garlic, no root vegetables — is doable but genuinely needs notice, since it rules out most of the standard base.

Allergies: tell us at booking and tell the cook again when you board. Fish and coconut are in nearly everything, so a shellfish or nut allergy is worth being emphatic about.

Children

The default Kerala menu is not especially spicy, but it is spiced. The cook will make something plain without any fuss — rice, chapati, plain omelette, plain chicken, fruit — if you mention it as you board. Bring a few familiar snacks anyway; there are no shops once the boat moors. There is more in the family guide.

Alcohol

Not included on any boat, on any tier. You are welcome to bring your own and the crew will serve it, chilled, with dinner.

Buy it before you reach the jetty. Kerala’s liquor retail is state-run with limited outlets and queues, so do it in town earlier in the day rather than on the way. Once the boat anchors there is no option at all.

Where it is actually cooked

At the back of the boat, on a gas stove, in a galley that is usually smaller than your bathroom at home. There is no oven and no refrigeration beyond a cold box. Everything is bought that morning and cooked that day, which is why the fish is good and why the menu is not infinitely flexible.

It is worth putting your head round the door and saying hello. Most cooks are pleased to be asked what they are making, and some will show you.

What to ask for, and when

Request	When to ask
Karimeen, prawns, crab	On boarding — it is bought en route
Pure vegetarian, vegan, jain	At booking
Allergies	At booking, and again on boarding
Plain food for children	On boarding
A cake, for an occasion	At booking — it comes from the mainland
Less spice generally	On boarding

The rule behind all of it: anything that has to be bought must be bought before 5:00 PM, because after that the boat is moored and the mainland is a long way off.

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Browse all 59 houseboat packages, see what else is included on the rates page, or read the full day in the first-timer’s guide.