Our story

The town

Honnavar sits where the Sharavathi river meets the Arabian Sea. Boats come in before the light does. By seven the auction is loud, by nine the good fish is gone, and by noon whatever is left is salted and on a rack.

That rack is the whole business. Dried fish is the oldest food on this coast — the thing that let a fishing town eat in the monsoon when no boat could leave. Nobody here calls it premium. They call it Tuesday.

The women on the racks

We buy from the harbour and hand it to the same women who have been cleaning and salting fish here for thirty years. They decide the salt. Not a recipe card, not a machine — a hand that has done it ten thousand times. We pay per day, not per kilo, so nobody is rushed into under-drying a batch.

Why under cover

Most dried fish on this coast dries on the ground, by the road. Sun does the work, but so does dust, so do flies, so does whatever the last lorry kicked up.

Ours dries on raised racks under net cover. Same sun, same sea breeze, one less set of things landing on your dinner. It takes about a day longer. That is the only difference, and it is the whole point.

Sealed loud

The complaint about dried fish is never the taste. It is the smell in the cupboard. So every pack has a vacuum-sealed inner bag inside the printed outer pack. Open it when you cook; until then your kitchen does not know it is there.

Every pack carries a batch code. Type it in here and you will see the day that fish was caught and the rack it sat on.

Arnava Coastal Kitchen

Kadalu & Co comes out of the same coastal kitchen as Arnava — the same sourcing, the same cooks, the same obsession with Byadgi chilli and kokum. If you have eaten there, you already know the masala in a KICK jar.

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