For A True Taste Of South India, Try A Toddy Shop
Toddy is a type of palm wine made from the fermented sap of coconut flowers. But the best toddy shops in southwestern India are celebrated for the spicy, coconutty food they serve with the drink.
In Kerala, a tropical slice of a state that runs along India's southwestern coast, people use every part of the coconut tree. The bark is used as firewood. The leaves and husks become mats and rope. The fruit, of course, features heavily in curries, chutneys and stews. The sweet sap can be used to make palm sugar. Or, left to ferment, it can be transformed into a special, mildly alcoholic brew called toddy.
Early each morning — almost exactly as they have been doing for hundreds of years — nearly 30,000 toddy tappers across the state risk their lives to clamber up coconut trees. Sometimes they walk from treetop to treetop on crude tightropes in search of
