Which curry dish is named after the Indian city now called Chennai?

The curry dish named after the Indian city now called Chennai is Madras curry.

Its name comes from Madras, the colonial-era name for Chennai, during the British Raj. The dish belongs mainly to Anglo-Indian cuisine rather than representing one standardized traditional recipe from Chennai itself. It is generally associated with a hot sauce containing onions, tomatoes, chilli and curry powder.

Madras curry became especially familiar outside India through curry houses and packaged spice blends. Recipes vary considerably: some use tamarind, garlic, ginger or coconut, while others emphasize a dry, fiery spice mixture. The name therefore describes a style or flavour profile more than a single fixed formula.

A common mix-up is assuming that Madras curry is a universally recognized Indian regional dish with one authentic recipe. The term is not commonly used in Indian cuisine in that standardized restaurant sense. In 1895, cookbook author Henrietta Hervey even described a “Madras” curry powder alongside Bombay and Bengal blends, showing how the label developed in Anglo-Indian cooking.