Kerala cooking is the gentle giant of Indian food — coconut-milk fish curries, appams like lace-edged pancakes, and thalis that keep arriving until you surrender — and Fort Kochi serves it with colonial-era atmosphere and Chinese fishing nets creaking on the shoreline. Buy prawns fresh from the nets and have a shack grill them on the spot. A backwater houseboat from nearby Alleppey adds a floating feast. Visit November to February, before the heat builds.
Featured in Ten tropical escapes where the food is half the point · Tropical