Chennai's food culture is anchored in the South Indian vegetarian tradition — idli, dosa, sambar, and filter coffee are the foundations, and the city's tiffin houses (breakfast and snack restaurants) serve these with an unmatched seriousness. But Chennai also has an outstanding non-vegetarian tradition — chettinad cuisine from the mercantile Chettiar community is one of the most complex and aromatic cooking styles in India, with dishes built on kalpasi (stone flower), marathi mokku (dried flowers), and other spices rarely used elsewhere.
The default meal sequence in Chennai: breakfast at a tiffin house (idli with sambar and coconut chutney, washed down with thick filter coffee in a steel tumbler), lunch as the main meal, a lighter dinner. Most of the best cooking happens in relatively unglamorous surroundings.