Chef Damu

Chef Damu died on the morning of 25 October 2026 at a private hospital in Chennai, where he had been admitted for about a week with illness. He was 72. The specific cause of death was not made public. His death was reported that morning by Samayam Tamil, Dinamani, Dinamalar, ETV Bharat and The Economic Times.

Two months earlier, in August 2026, rumours that he had died spread on social media after he missed the semi final of Cooku with Comali season 7. He responded with a video message saying he was alive and that an injection in his leg had kept him from the shoot, and he later appeared in the season finale.

News of his death brought tributes from fans, fellow chefs and people from Tamil television and cinema, many of whom left messages on his social media pages calling him Appa. Funeral arrangements had not been reported at the time of the first reports.

Damodharan Kothandaraman was born in Madras, now Chennai, on 3 September 1954. In later interviews he recalled that his father was the family's sole breadwinner and that there was rarely money to eat out, so his early memories of food centred on home: his grandmother's prawn masala, mutton kheema and coconut milk rice, and his mother's kuzhambu and seafood dishes.

He made his first dish, a semiya upma, at the age of seven. His mother, unimpressed by the result, kept him out of the kitchen, and because she feared that catering would lead to unemployment he first studied for a Bachelor of Commerce degree, later awarded by Madurai Kamaraj University. He then took a diploma in hotel management and catering technology at the Institute of Hotel Management in Taramani, Chennai. He later added an MBA from the University of Madras and hospitality qualifications from the American Hotel and Motel Association and Cornell University.

Damu began his working life in 1977 as a management trainee with the Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation and spent his early years in hotel kitchens before turning to teaching in 1986. He became one of the best known figures in catering education in Chennai, heading the Asan Institute of Hotel Management, the MGR Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology and the Empee Institute of Hotel Management and Catering Technology. He said he helped thousands of catering students find jobs in hotels. In 2004 the University of Madras awarded him a PhD in hotel management and catering technology, making him the first Indian chef to hold such a doctorate.

His public profile grew through television. Over more than two decades he hosted cookery programmes on Raj TV, Pothigai, Jaya TV, where he presented Arusuvai Neram, and Vijay TV, and he also appeared on Malayalam channels. From its first season in 2019 he was a judge on Cooku with Comali on Star Vijay, alongside chef Venkatesh Bhat in its early seasons, and he stayed with the show through its seventh season in 2026. Viewers came to call him Damu Appa. He also acted in Tamil films including Kallappadam (2015), Ulkuthu (2017) and Mrs & Mr (2025).

On 22 December 2010 in Chennai he set the Guinness World Record for the longest cooking marathon by an individual, preparing 617 dishes weighing 190 kilograms in 24 hours, 30 minutes and 12 seconds. He later led record attempts for the world's longest dosa in Madurai in 2012 and the largest curry in Singapore's Little India in 2014. He wrote more than 20 cookbooks, including Damu's Home Free Style Cook, as well as textbooks for catering students, and he was particularly devoted to Chettinad cooking.

He also worked with the Tamil Nadu government. Between 2008 and 2011 he helped revise the menus of the school noon meal scheme and trained about 140,000 noon meal workers across 32 districts, and he later demonstrated breakfast menus for the state's school breakfast programme. He served as president of the South Indian Chefs Association and as a knowledge partner for The Hindu's Our State Our Taste food competitions. In 2025 he received the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian honour, for his contribution to culinary arts.

Damu often spoke of cooking as a form of care and described his philosophy as food is medicine. He ground his own spice mixes and encouraged his viewers to do the same, and he regularly travelled to the Karaikudi region to collect traditional recipes. He was active in Rotary and served as president of the Rotary Club of Tambaram in 2007 and 2008, when the club supported polio vaccination drives, cataract operations for older people and weekly medical camps. Little about his family life was documented in reputable reports.

Damu helped change how cooking was seen as a profession in Tamil Nadu. He often said that when he started out nobody used the word chef, only cook, and his doctorate, his records and his years of teaching gave the trade a public dignity it had lacked. Thousands of catering graduates passed through the colleges he led, and his work on school meal menus reached millions of children. Through decades of television, and later through Cooku with Comali and YouTube, he taught several generations of viewers the traditional dishes of Tamil Nadu and the wider South, and he remained one of the most familiar and best loved culinary figures on Indian television.