Kalathil grew up in Kozhikode, Kerala, and Pak learned the region's cooking hands-on from his mother, Jolly Nelliparambil, during a month-long stay there — including how to griddle the thin fermented rice-and-coconut discs called appam that give the restaurant its name. Pak ran a Thattu pop-up starting in 2018, then opened a stall in the Politan Row food hall in 2019 that became a James Beard semifinalist for Best New Restaurant before the pandemic shut it down.
The current standalone restaurant opened in 2023 inside a former dental-implements factory, its exposed Chicago common brick doing a lot of the room's work. Closed Monday and Tuesday.
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