Culture & terms · Malabar food glossary
Mittayi Theruvu (SM Street)
Also known as: SM Street, Sweet Meat Street, Mittai Theruvu
Kozhikode's famous central shopping street, named 'Sweet Meat Street' by European traders after the halwa sold there - the historic home of the Kozhikodan halwa trade.
Mittayi Theruvu - the street of sweets - is the commercial spine of central Kozhikode, trading continuously for roughly five hundred years since the city was the Zamorin-era spice port. European traders called the glossy slab halwa sold here "sweet meat", and the name attached to the whole street: Sweet Meat Street, shortened to SM Street.
The street's halwa shops, many run by families across generations, still stack slabs in red, black, green and gold, and fresh banana chips are fried in shopfronts alongside. It remains the traditional place to buy Kozhikodan halwa.
The street also has rare literary standing: S. K. Pottekkatt's Malayalam classic Oru Theruvinte Katha (The Story of a Street) makes Mittayi Theruvu itself the protagonist, and the writer's statue stands nearby at Mananchira.