>The excellence in customer service award goes to Amore

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This is a tale that had to be told. Was just floored by the service of Amore Gelato at Bandra.

I was craving for ice cream couple of nights back. Last night too. We sat down for dinner. K called Amore. No one picked up. She called up Baskin Robins. No one picked up. Disheartened I sat for dinner.

Suddenly the phone rang. It was someone called Yasin from Amore.He was calling back our number. For the record, this was a new number for them so they didn’t know that we had called up. We usually call from my phone.

Yasin explained that their systems were down and they couldn’t deliver.

Well, nice of them to call back and tell us that.

But he went on. Apparently their head office has asked them to take down the number of those who had called to order but couldn’t get ice creams. They were to be given a complimentary gelato when the systems started working.

Well, we forgot about it. Anyway who was going to order an ice cream the next day to get a free ice cream? Chapter closed.

Tonight K got a call just as she was returning. It was from Amore. Their systems were working. They wanted to know what was the flavour that we wanted. We would get a medium cup on the house to make up for yesterday.

Ten minutes later the bell rang. It was Yasin. With a large cup of Ferrero Rocher flavoured gelato.

No questions asked.

Take a bow Amore.

Note: Amore’s phone number at Bandra is 65208300

>Oriental Indulgence. Golden Dragon, The Taj Mahal Hotel, Mumbai

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We were at a loss on where to close my birthday eating with. I was treating but K left the choice of place and cuisine to me. Sancho’s where we ate lunch had set a really high standard. Mexican cuisine was reasonably new to my palate. I wanted more. Let this birthday be a day of discoveries. There were a couple of French restaurants/ cafes which have opened in Mumbai recently. The feedback on them ranged from ambivalent to vitriolic after I asked around on twitter. Then K pointed me to my favourite cuisine. Chinese. She suggested the hallowed Golden Dragon of the Taj. Seemed like a good choice. Plus Ranjit, who had carefully hand picked a birthday gift hamper of the choicest condiments, said that Golden Dragon is good on Sichuan cuisine. While Mumbai is big on red coloured dishes called Schezwan, you can rarely get authentic Sichuan pepper based dishes outside of a five star here. We were on a relaxed budget that night.

We took a cab and went as we were told there was no valet parking. Unlike the ITC Grand Maratha or Thai Pavilion (Amba’s anniversary story), you don’t get a cake or free dessert at the Golden Dragon even if you suggestively say ‘birthday’ while booking. No free cabbage or khimchi either and we were a bit hungry.

The restaurant was brightly lit and the food blogger in me got excited. Good Photos. Most high end places at Mumbai are so dark. Almost as if they are embarrassed of the food they serve. No such problems here. The decor was reminiscent of a dining room of cruises in Agatha Christie murder movies. Grand, yet understated. Not too big. Sitting at a table across was a Parsi family who seemed quite at home here.

K chose a mocktail which was described as a ‘melted tiramisu’. She completely agreed with this. Made it a point to tell me that I should write that she disagreed with my description of ‘like cold coffee’. She knocked over a bit of her drink in her excitement. The folks at the Golden Dragon immediately replenished it. My Long Island Ice Tea was well made too.

K sips on her tiramisu

They were at their Candies

We had a fairly experienced gentleman named Elvis taking our order. He had a point of view on things. He rejected my order of ‘char siew’. Said it would be too sweet unless we wanted it that way. Thankfully approved of our next option. Sliced pork, bacon and string beans. This was a fantastic dish. The pork had a good lineage. The ham tender and yet salty like soft hearted sailor. The string beans extremely fresh and bouncy. We quite enjoyed the crunchy beans and didn’t fish it out as we normally do with vegetables that come with meat. An interesting balance of the innocence of greens and the sins of red meat. Almost like a Playboy Centrefold in a Nun’s habit.

I voluntarily finished the greens

 

Our other order of lobsters in pickle with ginger was poetic to say the least. The lobsters were demure and tender and were married harmoniously to the sharp and passionate pickles and ginger. An amazing combination of very pleasant, succulent bites punctuated by the odd zest of pickles. Both dishes were stellar and rose to the occasion.

Lobsters

 

We had this with a Sichuan vegetable noodles that Elvis recommended. This was off the menu. He had a strong point of view on this. I had visions of ghastly red noodles in my mind but went ahead with his recommendation. My first reaction when the noodles came was “it looks like something I would have cooked”. And I mean this is as a compliment. There was a certain fluffy airiness about the noodles which made you fall in love with them.Then there were the bites of fresh fiery Sichuan peppers which made you realised that this cherubic dish had a few pranks up its sleeve.

The food was really grand up to this point. My only grouse was that they got the dishes  immediately after the drinks which was a bit sad. What if we didn’t want to run out in twenty minutes after paying a good part of a cost of a night’s stay at the hotel? They should have at least asked if wanted the food along with the drinks instead of plonking it down all together.

The noodles wasn’t enough and I thought I’d go for a fried rice. They had burnt garlic rice and a rice with prawns, roast pork, chicken. After much silent callisthenics I managed to attract a waiter. Not Elvis though. This guy refused to give me a burnt garlic rice with roast pork. Apparently their chefs are too mechanised to be able to customise.  Which, for a very expensive place, was difficult to digest. Especially for someone who often thinks on his feet as he cooks. I went for an egg fried rice which was quite ordinary, not well flavoured and didn’t even seem very authentic to me. The rice was more Mr Chows than Taj IMHO.

Elvis later came and told us that we should have gone for the full blown pork, prawn ,chicken rice. Probably would have if he was taking our order and not the Storm Trooper.

Still, I must say that we ate a really grand dinner. Left me a lot happier than our meals at San Qi at Four Seasons and the one at the China House, Chinese place at the Santa Cruz Hyatt, did. And I was glad that K, who is not too fond of Chinese, or Mexican, liked both the meals. I was treating after all.

The price? I won’t mention that here as that would surely lead to an income tax raid at my place. Let’s say that it cost me as much as two night’s stay at a four star at Penang cost me. Remember, we didn’t drink too much. No desserts. No starters. But then you can’t expect ‘cheap’ when you go to THE Taj.

So would I prefer the Golden Dragon to a couple of nights at Penang and its Cafe 78? You should know me well enough by now.

Dreaming of the Orient. Of Georgetown. Of Cafe 78

>Lazy post: Khar Koli Fresh Water Fish Festival at Poonam’s

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Off to a vegetarian dinner cooked by a friend. Might label these later. Might not 🙂 OK, I did Mom’s always thrilled by the fact that they cut and clean the fish here unlike in Calcutta where you have to pay another guy to do so. In fact Mom let me to Poonam’s shop when she came to Mumbai. Poonam and her sister and mom were thrilled to know that I had gone to the Vasav Koli Festival.

By the way, this is a post by Sassy Fork on a real Koli Festival going on at Mahim right now

Rui Kaalia step one

Ilish…the key to a Bong’s heart

Poonam Cuts my ilish. Her mom cuts the rui

While her sister negotiates price with another docile Bengali gentleman

This surmai looks a bit stunned

wish I knew how to cook crabs

I bought some surmai slices even as K hollered on the phone “but we never finish them”

Ironically fresh water fish is cheaper than sea fish in the coastal city of Mumbai

These prawns looked so tempting. Why couldn’t spinach have high cholesterol?

Machher mudo or fish head. A Bengali wet dream

The Koli fresh water fish festival

Putting a price to our friendship

Sorry fellow Bongs

A well stocked Bong fridge

Alu chhok. A dish inspired by a tweet by @madhumita

Ilish bhaaja

>Khar’s new Urban Legend. Sancho’s

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We went to Sancho’s one evening. They didn’t take reservations. We didn’t get a table. A colleague and her husband went another night. They didn’t get a table too. In fact I didn’t know anyone who had gone to this new Mexican restaurant at Khar and eaten there. Yet, this was the restaurant everyone couldn’t stop talking about. For Mumbai barely has a Mexican restaurant. Very different from the late 90s when there was Taco Bell at Bandra’s Turner Road and a place called Sheriff at Linking Road, Bandra. Then the Mexican wave died. Till there was Sancho’s. But then again no one had actually eaten there. Was Sancho’s an Urban Legend?

I was unimpressed by the Mexican food in Mumbai in the late 90s. A forgettable tradition carried on till today by the Cream Centres and Bombay Blues of the world. Sticky, creamy, red things called nachos, enchiladas and other Gujarati sweet nothings. Mexican food in Mumbai was soon defined as beans, ketchup and poor quality melted cheese over sticky crackers.

Then Anthony Bourdain came into my life. I saw the episode of No Reservations where he went to Mexico City with one of his sous chefs. Apparently most kitchen chefs and workers in NYC are Mexican. Just as waiters in Mumbai in the late 90s used to be Bengali. Bourdain’s Mexico was very different from the synthetic Mexican of Mumbai. A riot of reds, greens, purples. Rich meats. Menacing chillies. Guacamole. Stuffed capsicum. This was oceans apart from the red plastic “Mexican” of Mumbai’s Gujarati havens. Then I read Anthony Bourdain’s book, ‘A Cook’s Tour’. The chapter where he goes to the ranch of another Mexican sous chef. Of the cow that was slaughtered and slow cooked underground. And the hours of tequilas which gave it company. This was a different world. A world for real men. Men who love to eat. And are proud about it. I had to go there. I had to experience it. I had to follow in Bourdain’s footsteps as my rites of passage.  And till I made it to Mexico, Sancho’s seemed to be the answer. But how did one go there? It is so difficult to get a table in the evenings. Then I thought of going there for lunch on my birthday. What better day than one’s birthday to experience something new?

We got a table. The restaurant was fairly empty on a Monday afternoon. Barring a table of vegetarian ladies who kept comparing the food with rajma and roti that they could make at home. The first thing that struck me was the sense of space. Sancho’s was not as small as we thought it would be. In which case the sort of crowds it garnered night after night was creditable. There was a certain calm and serenity to the place which is just what one needed after a dinner at home which ended at 4 AM.

Our first waiter was a bit circumspect. That wouldn’t work for me at a pricey place with an unfamiliar cuisine. I asked for a change of waiter and the next gentleman was sure of his stuff. We skipped the Margheritas and Sangrias (off the menu) and went for ice teas and Diet Cokes. I started going  though the menu and was impressed by the fact that they had divided it into authentic Mexican and Tex Mex (which is the American Mexican equivalent of Indian Chinese in spirit).

So the Mexican pork corn taco (RS 350ish, 7 USD), which we chose, was soft unlike Tex Mex which apparently was crisp. Our meat of choice was pork. ‘Belly’ as the waiter confirmed. K and I were both awed by the delicacy of the dish. It was a wrap stuffed with red meat, peppers, guacamole (thick like the way a girl I met recently said it should be). Yet seemed to float in our mouths. The taco extremely soft with a pleasant mouth feel. The pork as poetic as real meat can be. We chose Habanero Peppers, the hottest apparently in Mexico, to season our tacos. And boy, they seared even our Indian chili trained palates.

The tacos came with refried beans and K kept saying how she enjoyed her ‘rajma’ (Punjabi kidney beans) much to my discomfiture. I asked for an extra serving of guacamole which was a tad salty to eat by itself.

The other dish that I chose was a chicken chocolate mole. We had read about the use of chocolate in Mexican cooking in the book ‘Like Water Like Chocolate’. The chicken mole at Sancho’s was a more expensive dish (Rs 550 / 11 USD) than the taco. We got rice, beans, two thin strips of chicken with the chocolate sauce and a sprinkling of sesame seeds on its. The sauce wasn’t sweet and had a deep masculine taste to it with the understated heat of chilli. I guess that we haven’t taken to the taste of chocolate in food. Just as some don’t take to the taste of mustard in Bengali food. K said, “I don’t like anything coming between my chocolate and me”. I agreed. The tacos was a tough act to follow. The mole didn’t work for us.

Still, I must say, that it was after a long time that I had gone to a newly opened restaurant and really liked it. No wonder Sancho’s is full all the time. I hope they find space for us if we want to go there again some evening.

>Mumbai’s lost world…. Vesava Koli Seafood Festival (Versova)

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This post is dedicated to my friend Sassy Fork ‘s father who is in the hospital. Hope he gets and is back home soon.

This is a long post with many photos in between. To see these and more pictures head to this album in the Finely Chopped Facebook page.

The Vesava (Versova) Koli Seafood Festival is in its sixth year. Despite my interest in food, I had never heard about it till last year. Nor, had fellow Bengali and food lover (is there any other type?), Madhumita, whom I got to know through twitter. She lives pretty close to where the festival happens and yet hadn’t heard of it.

And that gets my goat. I always feel bad about how poorly we profile our country when I see the way the Singapores and the KLs of the world  make ‘love out of nothing at all’. And when rare initiatives like this happen then no one knows about it. Watch any TV show, food awards write up, article on seafood in Mumbai and you will get Gajalee, Trishna and, if you are lucky, Mahesh. The first is at least Maharashtrian food and the cuisine is Malwani. The latter two are Manglaorean.  From neighbouring Karnataka. Well who wants work hard and go beyond the obvious?

So it took my friend, who blogs as the Sassy Fork, to tell me about the Koli Sea Food festival. An attempt to show case the food and culture of the Kolis. The fisher folks who were apparently the earliest inhabitants of Mumbai. Mumbai was a set of seven fishing villages which the Portuguese gave to the British as dowry. (This is a rough round up of the lay of the land and not meant to be a historical treatise. This is a food blog after all.)

Sassy had told me about other fish festivals such as the one at Chembur, the one organised by the political party MNS at Shivaji Park and recently by the Ministry of Fisheries at BKC. My ambivalent feelings towards fish, laziness to travel far in the city to eat and distrust of carnival food ensured that I didn’t end up going to any of these.

That finally ended.Thankfully.  Madhumita, Jyotika of Follow My Recipe (an honest blog with a personal touch and some great photos) and I headed to the Versova Koli Sea Food Festival on Friday Night. Check out Jyotika’s excellent post on the fish food festival.

We drove down the Costa Coffee at Versova and entered a lane which had a banner of the festival. We drove down the narrow lane which had space for just one car. Surrounded on both sides by one to two story buildings which were so ‘not Mumbai’. Madhumita and I looked out and said ‘Bijoygarh’  in unison after the colony of Post Bangladesh war settlers in our native Kolkata.

 

We crossed the long lane and came onto the fairground (there was parking outside). Walked in to a see a huuuuuge field. Dotted with stalls. Billions of people sitting in the middle watching the cultural show consisting of Koli Dances at a podium. We bumped into fellow food blogger, Poonam Joshi of Homemade Happiness, too and later Suren whom I know through twitter.

Madhumita in grey & Jyotika in black…ladies who shoot what they eat

Koli dances firing up the Friday Night Fever

Madhumita, Jyo and I walked towards one of the stalls. The first thing that I saw were some pomfret and  huge prawns, slathered in red masala getting barbecues. The aroma was heady and I was in a trance and immediately ordered for a plate (6 for Rs 150/ 3 USD). “Is this for someone? No? Can we have these?”

 The three of us stood in a corner, didn’t  have the patience  to go to the tables close by. But we did take out our cameras and clicked, the prawns were still searing from the flames. And then the first bite. We knew we were in the right place. The prawns were so fresh that they almost swum out of our fingers and began to sing “Sheila Ke Jawani”. The marinade red, tongue tingling, unevenly salted. Rough and heart warming.

Bombay Duck Fry

Grilled lobsters which put me in a spell

Sizzling Surmai

And so the evening went. From one stall to another. With cheerful, kind Koli ladies dishing away their fare. They were dressed in typical Koli jewellery. The women in each stall wore saris of the same colour and pattern. As if it was the IPL opening ceremony. They were fast, efficient, smiling as they fried fish…many of them speaking in pretty good English.

A Bengali malai curry like lobster curry followed. I chewed on the head of the lobsters to get every drop of the juicy manna. The way I had learnt to eat crustaceans on my mother’s lap. Stuffed crab at Rs 100 (2 USD) or so for a small crab. There was very little meat inside but the coconut and coriander, chilli and coconut masala was more intoxicating than the bluest of Indigo. And then Madhumita, said ‘follow me children’ as she pointed the bounty of crab meat by the ridges of the shell. All of this mopped up with a tortilla like rice roti. Brought to our table straight from the girdle. A couple of beers and we headed to the other side. But not before I saw a lady at a stall deep frying little batter coated spherical  things (‘balls’ sounds so wrong) and came back to the girls with a plate of burst in your mouth, Bombil pakodas

We stopped at a stall in the middle of the field. Couple of young boys selling prawn Frankies. They were churning out these Mumbai wraps at the speed of ten a minute making them difficult to photograph. The Frankie (Rs 40/ 1 usd) reminded me of the alu (potato) rolls of Karco at Calcutta’s New Market with the odd shrimp jumping joyfully in every other bite.

Lobster curry

Prawn curry

Stuffed crabs

You will rarely see fresh water loving Bengalis so happy near Sea water fish

Stuffed crabs

Table manners in Bong

Notice the uniforms in each of these stalls

The very talented Jyotika clicks away

A Frankie making record of 10 a minute

Prawn frankie

We crossed over to the other side and giggled as we saw tiny bottles of Royal Stag whiskey. A Koli lady came up, smiled and said in very good English (I am stressing this as we were in a fishing village) and said “take take, you can’t eat fish without Royal Stag”.

This was the charming Ms Devyani who sat down by us to have a bite herself. I learnt that Devyani worked with Air India. The others in her stall either sold fish to local markets or owned fishing boats which theie workers took out to the sea. She told me that the Kolis were the original residents of Mumbai. They do not have a native land or ‘gao’ to go to. This is their original land. They speak a language which is apparently different from other Maharashtrian dialects though the script is the same.

Devyani looked sad when I asked her if there were any Koli restaurants at Mumbai. There weren’t. This fair which started six years back was as an attempt to fix this. In fact she and other stall owners were present in a number of these festivals.  Devyani said that the organisers of the Versova Festival ensured that the prices of the food were affordable to the masses and questioned any steep increase in price.

The ‘Malwani’ restaurants which you find at Mumbai, the Gajalees of the world, serve the cuisine of the Malwan region of coastal Maharashtra. Devyani  said that coconut formed the base of Malwani cuisine given Malwan’s  proximity to the sea. Koli dishes, on the other hand, largely hinge on chilli, ginger, garlic… no coconuts. Except in the stuffed dishes where the stuffing consists of a coconut marinade. As I told Devyani, I look forward to the day when Mumbai gets its first Koli restaurant.

I expressed my angst against the lack of publicity of these festivals. Devyani said that the organisers did put ads in local papers such as the Times. But she felt that the festival should be held at the beginning of the month while people had fresh pay checks. I told her that they had to target the festival to those beyond locals. The treasures of Mumbai should be proudly displayed to the whole world. Shouldn’t be tucked away. 

We ate one of the most memorable dishes of the evening at Devyani’s stall. Stuffed squids. The coriander and coconut marinade was very deep and stirred your soul. The squids were cooked in oodles of the marinade in the best traditions of the Indian coastal cuisine. “You can only taste the masala, and not the mussels….but the masala is lovely” as the Italian Chef Max once told me. Yet, the squids weren’t over cooked or rubbery.

They were quite fresh and complemented the masala very well. We had a fish roe fry which was a bit too lost in the gravy, especially for Madhumita and I as we have grown up on fish roe pakoras (bora in Bengali) which are eaten straight from the pan or curried.

Devyani in the Khaki sari

Fish roe fry

Tuna pakodas

Stuffed squids which stole our hearts

Learning more about the Kolis

We stopped at one more stall on the way back to take a look at a full Koli thali or meal. Rice, rice roti, mackerel fry, non coconut based Surmai curry and mussels stuffed with coconut marinade. The ladies here were disheartened when we didn’t eat anything there but we were stuffed to the gills by then. They sportingly posed for photographs though. I did offer to come and cook Bengali preparations of fish the next day. The chirpy ladies at the stall enthusiastically asked me about what all spices I would need for that so that they could keep it ready.

Of course no Indian meal couldn’t finish without a paan and the chilled (no, not seafood paans) were just what we needed.

The Koli Thali

Making plans to cook together

A life well lived

I didn’t go back the next day but do need to go back once to keep my promise. This evening was one which defined the term ‘magical’.  Warm and friendly people. Honest and fresh food. The privilege of being hosted by the natives of the city which has made you so welcome. A throw back to where it all started. It truly is ‘a wonderful life’.

The streets of the fishing village

The Koli Food Festival is on till today, 30^th January. 6 PM till midnight. The crowds increased yesterday from what I understand

>RIP JATC

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“I can walk to a place where butter melts on hot waffles and coffee shops know my name. That’s why I live in Bandra.”  Mrs Knife’s Facebook Status after our last breakfast at JATC

It felt strange to see the grey wall in front of me as I drove down today.

I felt like the legendary Bengali lover, Devdas, coming back home to find that his childhood sweetheart had got married and had gone off to her in laws. 

I knew that JATC Bandra had shut down a few days back. Twitter was abuzz with it. It’s just that I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. Was oblivious to it. Till I saw the high walls coming up where the welcoming gate once was. A part inside me died.

Just Around The Corner or JATC at Bandra was so much a part of my life here. It was a landmark. It represented everything that Bandra promised to a set of out of towners who had come to make their fortunes, all right who am I kidding, to get a job, at Mumbai. The atmosphere was casual, young, vibrant. You got a peep of the fringes of Bollywood. Over the years I had spotted Tabu and Mallaika Arora here. JATC was open late into the night. We could hang out here much later than what we were allowed to back home. It was a common meeting place. A place to grab a salad before catching a movie at Gaiety, Galaxy. Sarfarosh on a wet night if I remember right. The salad bar itself was so typical of our new world. It was a new concept. Symbolic of the new life we had moved into. As were the brownies and ice creams.

A year of courtship followed. We would stop at JATC at least once a week for dinner. Would have been more if K could rebut my theory that ‘salad isn’t dinner’. The ‘all you can pile on your plate’ salad concept was manna to couples eating on a budget. I was an expert of talking a half plate (Rs 70, 2000-01), piling salads then more sauces then more salads…then topping it with boiled eggs and desperately searched for pieces of ham. Patting it all together with a fork to form a pyramid. Hoping that the wobbling tower of boiled stuff wouldn’t topple over before you reached the cash counter. Come on, admit it, you have all done it.

Bachelorhood ended and the salad dinner dates turned into waffle breakfast outings. They had a waffle and coffee combo at JATC. That along with a Mid Day, that K would give me 5 Rs to buy with, was the only way to start a Sunday.

Then  Candies came into our lives, the odd trip to Crepe Station or Coffee Bean, and the breakfast trips to JATC became rare. Plus I would always end up bursting a few blood vessels as week after week the folks at JATC would never follow my instructions to get the waffles and coffee together.

Of course JATC was about more than just salads and waffles. A preferred spot for her to storm off to after the noodles turned out to be soggy and over cooked. A place to pick up the chocolate milk shake that she so liked when she was home and not well. With extra chocolate sprinkles. The place where we picked up pastas one NYE when we couldn’t get a restaurant table.  A place to have the in laws over for sandwiches that ‘daddy liked’. Chicken junglee, shredded ham and cheese. And boiled egg salad for the mother in law.

We went to JATC after ages sometime back. The waffles were perfect. Butter and honey happily flowing over mine. Just butter over hers. The coffee was brought in at the right time. The conversation was pleasant. The morning scripted to perfection. The birds were chirping. The world was happy.

Little did we know that it was our last breakfast at JATC, Bandra.

PS: This was apparently not The End. Read this 10/2/2011

>A great come-back… Indigo Deli, Palladium

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A quick note on Indigo Deli at Palladium.

I had been there earlier. I had written about my inconsistent experiences during my visits to Indigo Deli. Some dishes thrilled. Others under-awed. And the chairs gave you a bad back.

Well, we went there a few nights back after watching ‘Dhobi Ghat’. An Indian film that tried hard to match up with the best of world cinema. Too hard perhaps.

Well, there was no flaw at our dinner at Indigo Deli this time. The food was uniformly brilliant. The chairs were the same but the exquisiteness of the food washed away all pain.

We ordered barbecued pork spare ribs. Extremely luscious meat in a sauce with a point of view. The sauce had a nice coarse texture and the shreds of red chili added an exciting touch. It had just the right amount of sweetness and tart to tantalise without being mushy. Each bite was followed by a nod of approval from us. It cost a bit more than Rs 400 (8 USD) but could have fed both of us. 

The sweetish corn bread which came with this was not too impressive. A uniquely disquieting combination of sweet and smoke.

The spaghetti in pesto that we ordered made up for the bread. We asked for mushrooms on top as chicken didn’t seem that interesting. And extra pine nuts. The pesto was refreshing and without cream as I had specified. The parmesan was understated and was a perfect foil to the zest of basil. The sauce could have been a tad stiffer and less liquidy in my opinion. We still loved it though. Including K who doesn’t like spaghetti. This, at Rs 400, was a bit too expensive if you ask me. But we had ordered off the menu and this was billed as ‘guest’s special’.

K’s dessert choice of baked chocolate brownie cheesecake couldn’t be faulted. It was dessert heaven. Warm, sensuous, seductive and with ice cream a bit too raunchy for public display.

We ate well. Definitely ‘worth repeating’ as my Mom in law would say.

>An afternoon with Xanthe Clay at my Fort

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With Xanthe Clay & Heathcliff on the streets of Mumbai

Warning: Long post ahead 

Xanthe Clay

Well, this is another Twitter story. Pamela Timms and I know each other through twitter. She tweets as @eatanddust. (I am, er, @finelychopped on twitter). Pmalea is an expat at Delhi who writes a food blog called Eat And Dust. She writes for publications too and you would never guess that she is not a local when you read her write ups.

Pamela wrote to me a few days back asking me if I could hook up with someone called Xanthe Clay who was coming to India to do a story on the local food. Now, I must confess that I had no idea who Xanthe was. More a testimony of the fact that I don’t read as much as I should than anything else.  Xanthe and I exchanged a few mails. She wanted me to show her my favourite eating places at Mumbai. The answer was obvious, take her to Fort.

We met at her hotel around lunch time on Friday. Xanthe told me that she met Camellia Panjabi, the Grand Dame of Indian food writing, the previous day. I felt like an amateur Karaoke singer about to perform after Lata Mangeshkar.

 Xanthe was the only person I know whose name starts with X. As I later found out, her parents had given her a Grecian name. A Google search on the phone the previous night and our chat during the day revealed that Xanthe was a big food writer in the UK. She’s written three books and now is onto her fourth. Her books, from what I gather, try to focus on demystifying and simplifying cooking. “I don’t write about difficult cooking”, she said. Well, that sounded like my sort of cooking. Xanthe tweets as @Xanthecooks She is also a food columnist for The Daily Telegraph in the UK.

Turned out that she personally knew Simon Majumdar, food blogger turned food author turned food reality show judge and someone I admire, for a while. According to Xanthe, Simon was someone who ‘calls a spade a spade’. That’s exactly what I’d like to be known as. That’s why Finely Chopped was born. And yet, Simon is the nicest, and only, celebrity I know and he sincerely answers any questions that I have.  

Well, that’s all about Xanthe professionally. The first thing that strikes you when you meet Xanthe the person is that she is one of the sweetest people you could meet. Extremely charming, gentle and with a very disarming smile. She is just the kind of person you would run to if you were stuck in a room full of bawling Kindergarten kids and didn’t know what to do. She was extremely non-fussed and walked the crowded streets of Fort without a tremor and sampled food and drinks from the street side stalls without flinching.

All of this is real, Xanthe dug in to everything without a second thought

Accompanying her was Heathcliff, the photographer. His work has taken him to all parts of the world. It was amazing to see how he drew similarities with what he saw at Syria when I showed him a Parsi Fire Temple here. Heathcliff too had no hang-ups while trying out the food and seemed to be as into the assignment as Xanthe. It was amazing to see Heathcliff walk around with three bazooka like cameras while I ended up with sore shoulders with my tiny little Sony cyber shot at the end of the day. 

The khao gulley or ‘Eat Street’ of Fort

I won’t get into the details of the street food because that’s what Xanthe’s article will be about. This is more about what happened that afternoon.

We started our Fort walk with a homage to history. Laxmi Building, and its plaque announcing its inauguration by Sjt Subhas Chandra Bose in 1938. And then ‘The Bombay Store’ which Xanthe found to be quite ‘posh’. I showed her the ‘Bombay Swadeshi Stores’ plaque and gave her a lecture on Bal Gangadhar Tilak and how he opened this store to take on the British who dumped their goods at India. More than a hundred years back. Thank god for Amar Chitra Katha history lessons. ”The British were the bad guys”, I looked pointedly at the fairy godmotherlike Xanthe, and Heathcliff who was quite an anti-imperialist himself.

We headed to one of the many Khao Gulleys of India that sustained its middle class worker bees. I had discovered this one at Fort on a rainy day on the way back from Puncham Puri. A few centuries back. 

We first bumped into people eating red rice with brown dumplings on plastic plates… I introduced our visitors to the concept of Schezwan…the Indian cousin of Sichuan. “Always red”.

Bhel puri stall next, except sev puri photographed better according to our visitors. The bhel was consigned to a corner as we munched on sev puri and ragra pudi and dahi puri. In any case I prefer sev puris or ‘Indian canapes’ as I described them. The unhealthier and more deep fried the better for me.  I gave a free Hindi lesson here. Sukha is dry. Bheega is wet. Khatta is sour. Meetha is sweet. Kam Teekha is less hot. There is a new Vinod Dua in town.

Vada pao shoot followed and then my lecture on the difference between kandapakora (‘tomato tomato’). We headed to the Pao bhaji stall to see the making of ‘tava pulao. “Not ‘pilaf’. That’s Persian”. And then a chai stall where Xanthe enthusiastically sipped a glass of cutting chai and learnt about the concept of ‘cutting’. “Half a cup so that you can drink many through the day. Rs 4 versus Rs 8 for a glass”.

Mewad ice cream followed which both Xanthe and I liked. Reminded me of the lunches at Nariman Point when I used to work there. The photographer in Heatchliff made him choose falooda for its kaleidoscopic balance of textures and colours. We then crossed over to the Apoorva gulley. Lunch time was over. Saw the remains in the vessels of a Maharashtrian Moushi’s cart run by the Amres. Two carts down was Swamy who came to Mumbai from Coimbatore fifty years back.  He served more than 38 types of rice at this spot for twenty years now. Heathcliff clicked away at sheera (sweet semolina), upma (salt), idli, curd rice or tair sadam, tamarind rice, lemon rice and sambar rice. And then we set off for cut fruits.

Our street food walk brought us across the various faces of Mumbaikars. Enthusiastic bystanders who joined in the conversation with explanations and suggestions. Street fruit vendors who kindly let us click away without even knowing that we were actually going to pay for what we ate (this was not a PR shoot or a press junket). The odd strain of post Headley suspicion in a vendor and a lawyer who didn’t want to be photographed. The fruit seller who was fine with us photographing as long as we didn’t disturb his work. This was business hour for him in the city’s former commercial centre. And the proud Maharashtrian food vendor who asked me to take our visitors to ‘good healths’ rather than showing the ‘cheap street stuff’. Mumbai is a world city after all.

The bystanders joined in with their suggestions. They were Maharashtrians & told me that Ragda puri is apparently a Gujarati invention…loved by all

‘Ragda’ or chickpeas

The faluda won Heathcliff’s heart

My take on faluda…would love to see Heathcliff’s pics

Memories of mewad ice cream

“Rapidex’ Hindi lessons

Cutting chai

Swami and his rice cart

With my family at Fort

I was touched by the way I was welcome back by all ‘my people’ at Fort. I had just been there for four months after all. It started right with the parking lot guys. Dipu the sandwich wallah, the last person I said goodbye to when I left Fort a fortnight back. Then the welcoming smell of Ustaad’s jalebis. The Vidya Dairy Farm refused to take money for the jalebis and samosas that they served us. The Prodigal Son had returned. Ustaad who was taking a post lunch break gamely came out and started making jalebis for Heathcliff to photograph. Man, does the old man love the camera or what? Never realised that our Pehelwan was so short. 

We didn’t go to Apoorva or Swaghath as Xanthe and Heathcliff were interested in street food. I took them to Ideal Corner though and I packed dhansaks for dinner. It was good to meet Walter and the manager again. Parvez had just left. The waiters smiled and giggled when I asked them if they’d give me a job. Will there ever be a proverbial ‘rich uncle’ in my life?

Our tour continued and a trip to the paan shop in front of Lalit where the security guards of an unknown ‘important person’ picked me up for taking photos on my second day at Fort. And then we went to the smiling juicewallah where I had a strawberry milk shake after ages. He didn’t approve of Heathcliff’s choice of beet, carrot and apple though.

Our next stop, Yazdani Bakery, where I introduced Xanthe to the Iranis and Parsis. “A bit like the way the Brits look at the French, idiosyncratic, quaint, love food”. We chatted with one of the owners, Mr Parvez Irani, whom I met for the first time. He told us about how a Japanese consul member came and told him that Yazdani stood where a Bank of Tokyo branch once stood in the hoary past. And of the German baker who came visiting in the 80s and said that Yazdani made the best bread in the world. Then Tirandaz Irani came to the shop and allowed me into the hallowed baking area for the third time. Xanthe was awestruck, as I was each time that I went in, by the deeeeeeep oven. On the way out she joined the bakers in rolling dough, synchronised as if it was a West End musical.

Ustaad loves the camera. I really miss him

10 kilo maida, 250 g besan, chini, colour…sounds so simple

Took a while before the juice wala gave in to Heathcliff’s request of beet, carrot AND apple

The right way to drink Brun Maska

Xanthe Charms Mr Rashid Irani…not the easiest of tasks

The Fire Temple for those who love to bake

‘My Fair lady’, now playing at Yazdani Bakery

Tirandaz Irani in the corner… this is the third time that he let me into the bakery. Third time that I asked him to

A last walk down the street that led to Fort House. Suresh’s vada pao shops where the vada pao maker remembered me. He got bashful when bystanders told him that his photos would come out at London. The bearded guy at the counter of Fountain Plaza waved out at me as he always did. 

A final sev puri stop. Xanthe said that she had a ‘feeling’ about it. She was right. We had a remarkable sev puri and did a little video clip where I nodded away like a cheer leader while Xanthe described the making of sev puri.

The gentleman in blue most sportingly let us photograph his lunch

Shoo you evil eye

Puris…who could not love them

‘Sev’ comes to the party

Getting ready for the shoot

 At the Queen’s Necklace

Off to Marine Drive where Heathcliff wanted to shoot the sunset. I took a few photos too as I had never been here with a digital camera. Xanthe and I chatted for a while as I got to know about her work. I had done most of the talking so far. “Indian food is about existence and not indulgence. That’s why we don’t focus on plating” and that sort of stuff had made up our day.

Xanthe told me about her belief in blogging as a way to get noticed as a writer. And about how she felt that content was more important than worrying too much about Google searches. An interesting perspective for Heathcliff too who was trying to figure out how to balance a blog with socio political views with a more ‘effective’ photographer’s portfolio blog. 

It was soon time to part but not before I answered Xanthe’s questions on etiquette. “Do a Namaste only to doormen, chauffeurs, etc. If you are meeting someone from the English speaking urban ‘elite’ then a simple handshake would do. A folded hands Namaste would seem facetious”.
  

The Queen’s Necklace

Warming up to India

‘In conversation with Xanthe Clay’ as K Jo would say

Xanthe wanted to know what my favourite from the street food of Mumbai was. After a bit of thinking I said that it would be the ‘Mumbai sandwich’. It was unique and had a sense of buttery indulgence. As I explained, we were extremely loyal to the street food of our little corners of India. As a former Calcuttan my love for phuckas and rolls would never let me get impressed by vada pao, sev or bhel puri. The Mumbai sandwich was suitably neutral and Western and didn’t compete directly with my favourites.

Mumbai Sandwich

And thus ended an afternoon where I got to do what I love the most. Introduce the world to a Mumbai which lies somewhere in between the depths of Slumdog Millionaire and the excesses of Mukesh Ambani’s Antilla. To the real India. A tiny part of it.

The afternoon opened a number of doors in my mind. Left me with deep thoughts. Largely to do with whether any British paper would send Nigella to do a food piece at Mumbai.

>Of being ‘Fort Enchanted’

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Ustaad with his rangeen photos

 
I would often cross the sweet shop on my way to lunch. The smell of fresh jalebis inviting me from way ahead. I would always stop to wish ‘Ustaad’. He would extend his elbow to me to shake. Hands covered in jalebi mix. And then, from behind the swarthy moustache, the squeaky voice would say “aap mujhe rangeen photo dena”.

I had given him a black and white print out of the post I had written about him. But ‘pehelwan’ (or wrestler), as some called him, wanted coloured prints. Something we had forgotten in the age of Picassa and Flickr.

Today, on my last day at Fort, I fulfilled my promise.

I don’t know know what made me fall in love with Fort the way I did. Was it the approach to Fort? The poetry of Muslim architecture by the J J Flyover. The Victorian Majesty of VT, the BMC and Times of India buildings. The chutzpah of the art deco buildings by my office. An office building which was inaugurated by a certain Sjt Subhas Chandra Bose in 1938. Opposite a shop opened by Bal Gangadhar Tilak when he raised his cry of Swadeshi (self rule) against the British. The same British who had helped plan a charmed business district with enough trees or shade for the weary traveller to rest by. Was it the winding walks with each lane opening into a new wonder? Stumbling into a Garden of Eden one day. Also known as Horniman Circle? Or the parking lot guys who would park my car when chubby, my driver, was bunking. They were all from the same gaon or village apparently.

The friends I would meet, old and new? Amba, Kaniska, Gia, Mama, Ranjit, Viraj, Ashish, Berges, Andrea, Shaheen. Drawn to Fort like bees to a honeycomb. Or was it the many afternoons of getting lost? Of  ‘hearing one’s inner voice’ as Tony Bourdain once put it.

VT or CST

Bohri Masjid

Tilak’s Bombay Stores & the art deco buildings

Horniman Circle

An Irani cafe in Japanese building

Laxmi Building

Was it all the fresh, wholesome, honest food with prices from another century? Dhansak at Ideal Corner. Ironically my first and last lunch at Fort. Their atheli chicken pateta and gun powder pork. Ulundu and Mysore Sada Dosa, kick in the butt filter coffee at Swagath. The breads of Yazdani Bakery. Apple pies and Christmas Cake too. Apoorva’s stews, appams and Gassis. Banana leaf vegetarian meals at Deluxe with delectable Surmai  fries. Beef and paratha at Rahmaniya. Deepu’s sandwiches. Madhukar’s Lassis. Muzzafar’s palak bhajiyas. Puris at Puncham Puri and Mathura Sweets.

Ustaad’s jalebis

Suresh’s Palak Bhajiyas

Chicken stew at Apoorva

Chicken fry and parota at Garden Plaza

Those jalebis again

Banana leaf meal at Deluxe

Moti Lassi with malai

I had most of my lunches here

Ideal Corner’s dhansak my first and last lunch at Fort

Evenings at Swagath…Mysore sada dose

Yazadani’s breads

Puncham and his Puris

Bombay Sandwiches

Kick in the butt filter coffee at Swagath

Or did the spell of Fort lie in its people? Parvez Irani and Tirandaaz Irani of Cafe Ideal Corner and Yazdani Bakery who broke the myth of grumpy owners of Irani Cafes. Krishna, the owner of Apoorva who would often sit down at my table to chat with me. And hand out a ten per cent discount. Dipu the big hearted sandwichwallah who would wave at me every day. The last person I said goodbye to today at Fort as I handed him a printout of the post I wrote on him. The scion of Mathura Sweets, unshaven with an ear stud, wishing me in perfect English. Muzzafar and his colleagues at Suresh’s Batata Vada shop, smiling at me when I would go by. As would the bearded man at the counter of Fountain Plaza opposite. Or Madhukar the Maharashtrian lassiwallah at the Punjabi Moti Halwai, who posed for me one day.

My regular waiter with curly hair at Swagath Udipi. Patiently explaining to me the difference between set and ulundu dosa. As we got to know each other he would wrap my coffee glass with a tissue paper, the way I liked it, when I sipped on a hot filter coffee on the road. His colleagues at Swagath, all excited to see the blog post on them on their ‘Idea Mobile’ (no not a plug). The three waiters at Cafe Ideal who would always serve me with care. The waiter from Udipi at Aoorva who would take my order with a bashful smile, embarrassed when I shook his hand after new year. The waiter in the AC section at Deluxe who would meticulously explain each item in the Keralite banana leaf thali. Getting me steaming glasses of rassam on the house on days when I wouldn’t go for the full meal. “Have it. It is fresh”. The waiter at Puncham Puri who told us about the fact that the venerable Mr Puncham had set up his puri shop way before CST station existed. A rare breed in a city of restaurants with inept untrained staff.

With the Yazdani Bakery Gang. Photo: Shaheen P

The folks at Swagath read the post on them

Muzaffar at Suresh’s

Our man from Udipi at Apoorva

Intense discussion with Krishna of Apoorva on Thai food

Madhukar at Moti’s lassis

Tirandaz Irani of Yazdani enacts the Rin ad shot here

Third generation scion of Mathura Sweets

Dipu the sandwichwallah with the heart of gold

The every smiling Parvez Irani of Ideal Corner with his merry band

 
Or were it the bakers from UP at Yazadan Bakery? Posing for me not once, but twice when I came in for shoots.The earnest father and daughter who ran the humble Pradeep Gomantak? The cart owners at Khao Gulley who posed for me one day as I took photographs. Or the trips to Colaba? To Ling’s and Johnny and bacon pot rice and pork belly. To Olympia and its super fantastic kachhi biriyani and mutton masala fry. Or to Samovar and its parathas.

Biriyani at Olympia

The super sweet Johny at Ling’s Pavilion

 
Would it be the strangers I shared tables and conversations with at Rahmaniya, Garden Plaza, Deluxe, Yazadani, Ideal Corner, Swagath and Apoorva? Strangers who became lunch mates for a few magical moments.

Or was it just all about Ustaad and his fresh, hot jalebis?

Ustaad. AKA Pehelwan

Gosh, I must have done something really good to have deserved this. Maybe there is an angel looking after bloggers.

I bid my goodbyes at Fort today. To Ustaad. To the dhansak at Ideal Corner. To the folks at Swagath.

As Jim Morrison said,“When the music’s over … Turn out the lights”

When the music’s over

>Gia. Sixty Four not out … Christmas Cakes, Rum Balls, Chocolate Cakes, Sorpotel

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Big thank you to Debopriyo of Debopriyo’s Pictures, who answered my cry for help on uploading photos on blogger. This is what he had to say “For faster uploading of pictures, try draft.blogger.com. Log in with the same login and password and click the “Make Blogger in draft my default dashboard”.
The same blog will open up and the uploading system is a whole lot better.”

Am looking forward to writing the next post now. Was really stressed about uploading photos. 

For more photos of Gia’s cake check out this album on the Finely Chopped Facebook page

The Haghia Sophia at Istanbul was once the central cathedral of Christianity. Istanbul was Constantinople then. The headquarters of Christianity. Then came the Ottoman empire. The Haghia Sophiya Cathedral became the Ayasofiya Mosque. Constantinople … Istanbul. Till Ataturk, the first Turkish President converted it into a secular museum.

I took my first proper bite of Gia’s Christmas cake today. Was almost knocked down by the intoxicating whiff of rum. The cake was soft, moist, hugged the knife (no pun intended) as you cut it. Chirpy as a little plump teen sipping on his first sherry. Filled with raisins and dried fruits bringing in a touch of the Ottoman into a Christian tradition. East met west, ensuring that the Yuletide spirit spread well after Christmas. These cakes were even better than last year’s.

It is always difficult to write on something involving a friend. Objectivity of blogging and all that jazz which I live by. Plus my reputation was at stake. I had announced the Inception of these cakes to the world after all. But our ‘Baker with an Edge’ didn’t let me down. And I can hear her say in a desultory drawl, “what, you doubted it or what?”

So here folks are Gia’s Christmas Cakes. 64 of them were baked. Twenty five kilos. Single handedly. Without any help. Now if only Christmas Cake Baking is made into an Olympic Sport.

And here are the rum balls. You are warned not to drive after biting into one of them. The police is pretty strict these days.

And Kainaz’s favourite cake. The cake baked by Gia which spoilt her for very other cake. The cake which makes you find K more often  in the fridge than outside. Face covered in cake. A happy content smile on her face. Baked by Gia almost a year after she baked the earlier one. “It is exactly the same”, exclaimed Mrs K with glee.

That’s not all. We got to taste Gia’s sorpotel yesterday. It came with very precise instructions on how to heat it. The unsaid message, “not in the effing micro”.

How was it? Well Kainaz, who belongs to the vindaloo camp, needed a restraining order so that I could get a bite.

Sorry Gia. I know you think it’s a hassle and don’t want to do it but you should take catering orders too. Mankind needs it.

Note: This is not an anonymous review. All the food here were gifts from a friend. So would be great if any of you, who ordered them, write in on how you found Gia’s stuff.

‘Gia’

“And the award for the biggest fan goes to…”