A kiosk that’s making everyone ‘hog’

The conversation begins with a regular customer saying, “I am a Brahmin — I finished my sandhyavandhanai in the morning, went to the temple in the evening and now I’m eating pork. The best pork I’ve had in three years of me being a meat eater.” Shyam Chandar is only one such customer that Oink has attracted since the tiny kiosk’s recent launch. Located in the backyard of co-founder Rohini Chandrakumar’s home on Sterling Road, it was started for one sole reason, which Shanthala T Medappa, the other partner, explains.

“I am from Coorg and when I got married and moved to Chennai, my husband and I would host a lot of parties. Since Coorg cuisine is rare to find here, I’d make the traditional pandi curry among other dishes and the guests would always leave asking for more,” she says. Rohini too tasted the pork at one such event and like many others, she suggested that Shanthala take orders for the curry. “Rohini was looking to start a venture of her own too so one thing led to another and we set up Oink — purely for people’s love for good pork,” says Shanthala, who’s also a yoga acharya and runs Old Mercara that sells peanut butter, ice creams and more.

The partners have the most hilarious stories to tell about the customers they’ve served but the funniest of all is probably the fact that Shanthala was vegan growing up and only started eating pork much later and only the way it’s cooked in Oink. “I remember the times when back in Coorg, we would have barbecue nights at home and my father would make these amazing marinations for pork with spices and chillies. Even then, I wasn’t much into meat or dairy and I would dip an orange into this marination and eat it!”

Since they both eats pork only if it’s really well-made, the duo has ensured they make all the dishes using the finest quality of meat sourced from Bengaluru and homegrown spices. They go through about 30 kg of pork on weekdays to make the pandi curry, porky pav (pulled pork with bread), pork ribs, chilly pork and hotdogs, while the quantity increases on weekends. Another specialty is that none of the dishes is made with oil save the fat from the meat, which Shyam Sundar tells us has helped in greatly in sticking to his diet. “I follow a paleo diet, which means I should have a higher intake of healthy fats and lesser carbs — this way, my body will not burn the carbs and store fat, but burn fat itself,” he shares.

Didn’t we say they had interesting stories to tell? One can experience all this food, conversation and love for pork with a steaming hot cup of filter coffee, freshly sourced from Coorg.