World famous Tamil chef Shankar R. Santhiram brings his banana leaf sappadu from Penang to Pali Hill. The full Tamil virundhu — served, and served again, until you fold the leaf.
A meal that keeps arriving.
Sappadu is the Tamil word for the meal itself — rice, curries, poriyal, kootu, pickle, pappadam, laid out on a banana leaf and refilled until you've had your fill.
Twelve services
Four a day across three days. Book early to pick your time.
Two leaves, one price
Full vegetarian and non-vegetarian sappadu, side by side.
The fifty-kilometre rule.
Shankar treats India as a subcontinent of many cuisines. By his reckoning, the way a sambar is made changes every fifty kilometres. Malaysian Tamil cooking is what those recipes became after they travelled across an ocean. What arrives on the leaf will be familiar and unfamiliar at once.
Shankar R. Santhiram
World famous Malaysian Tamil chef, author and leadership consultant, reaching audiences from Penang to Durban.
Since 2023 he has been Chef Patron of Fire by Shankar — Penang's destination for Tamil fine dining. He writes two weekly columns and is currently filming a ten-episode series, Shankar's Saapadu Story South Africa.
- 1999 — The Indian Chapter Opens his first restaurant in Malacca.
- 2002 — EQTD Consulting Founds his leadership development practice.
- 2019 — The Fire Grill Remodels his KL bistro to focus purely on food.
- 2023 — Fire by Shankar Chef Patron at Straits Quay, Penang.
