Midnight snack @ Aromas

A nice little cafe in hiranandani with a warm and welcoming ambience. Often come here for a late night snack. They serve a refreshing ice tea which is actually freshly brewed and not the instant powder stuff served in your run of the mill cafes ...

For bites check out their pizzas, chicken peri peri which we had today :-), bruschettas. The desserts are awesome ... We had the carrot and walnut brownie with icecream today !!!

Gotta work off the extra calories tomorrow ...

Midnight snack @ Rhythm Beatle Powai

Rhythm the 24/7 coffee shop @ Hotel Beatle Powai serves a huge club sandwich ... ideal for a midnight snack for 2 !!!
This is our latest gourmet discovery in Powai !!!

Jimmy Boy and Bade Mian

Two culinary institutions of Mumbai visited on the same Saturday sometime last year ...

Jimmy Boy : Entered and noticed Raju Hirani sitting at a corner table relishing some mutton dhansak. We ordered the lagan nu bhonu (inr 600) which is a typical Parsi wedding meal ... Came with patrani machchi, dhansak, other dishes and ended with lagan nu custard. Good for 2 unless you are very hungry. Awesome lip-smacking food ... Will be back for more !!!

We'd parked the car at the Horniman Circle bang opposite :

Bade Mian : We only knew of the Bade Mian on the lane behind the Taj ... This one is decidedly more upmarket ... Has airconditioning for godssake :-) learnt that this is a branch of the original BM. After lunch at JB we'd spent a couple hours browsing @ Jehangir Art Gallery and were getting a bit hungry ... So asked for a plate of Chicken malai kebaabs (inr 150) ... Nice !!!

Anand : Serving Mumbai's best Vada Pav !!!

Assembling a Vada Pav - Bun (pav ), Butter, Green Chutney, Masala powder, Potato patty ( vada ) takes less than 10 seconds ...

"Vada Pav" is the street food Mumbai survives on ... and "Anand Vada Pav" opposite Mithibhai College, near Narsee Monjee is definitely the best I've had.

Bombay Times official annual Vada Pao ranking gives it the runner's up position ... which is not bad considering there are over 5,000 Vada Pav street stalls in Mumbai !!!

There's even been an attempt to McDonaldize the humble Vada Pav with the launch of Jumbo King ... should be an interesting case study on how to sustain a business with razor thin margins competing with street vendors who have almost no overhead costs. While they may have scale ... their product lacks the necessary zing which titillates the taste buds ... street vendors like Anand know how to pack in that punch !!!

Durga Puja 2010 at Powai, Mumbai

pic above : yummy fish fry with mustard sauce !!!!!

This might well be the last Durga Puja celebration at Hiranandani Powai. In its 5th year, this puja organized by Powai Bengali Association, has come a long way in terms of scale and popularity. Unfortunately the ground where the pujas are held has been earmarked for construction of a bus stand !!!

Cant think of any alternate grounds nearby to organize the puja at this scale. Having a relatively large ground also allows the setting up of an entertainment zone to showcase local amateur talent and import the pros from Kolkata ... bengali rock band Chandrabindu, Usha Uthup etc are artistes who perform here regaularly.

Finally there are the food stalls ... with all the goodies loved by bengalis ... mochar chop, fish fry, chiken roll, mutton kosha, luchi alur-dom and biriyani. Gobbled up quite a few fish fries with a dash of mustard myself today evening and looking forward to checking out more dishes tomorrow for dinner.

Hope to visit the Lokhandwala, Poonam Nagar, Santra Cruz pujas tomorrow ... lets see if can can squeeze in the Kandivli pujas ... unfortunately will have to give Shivaji Park, Vashi pujas the miss this year.

Bengali Sweets in Mumbai

I dont think I have a "Sweet Tooth" as such but then you cant keep a bong away from his beloved ilish and mishti for long. After all we bongs live to eat ...

So when the urge to dig into a nolen gurer shondesh, kheer kodombo or mishti doi+rosogolla gets really strong ( and it happens about once in a couple months ) "Sweet Bengal" is where we head off to ... the only joint in Mumbai where you get authentic Bengali sweets.

There are quite a few branches ... the nearest to our home is the one @ 1st Floor Galleria Mall, Hiranandani - Powai and others on JP Road Andheri West, Napean Sea Road ( pictures above ), Inorbit Mall-Malad etc ... The quality and taste is consistently amazing and the ambience is pleasantly bengali with Jamini Roy prints, copies of Desh & Sananda for sale ... The salesmen are usually bongs themselves and once they make out you are bong will give you a nice toothy smile and start chatting in bong and urge you to have the extra mohan bhog or plate of rosomalai ...

Getting tempted to go and have some koraishutir kochuri and chhannar shingara today ...

Cabbages & Condoms, Sukhumvit Soi12, Bangkok

Before your thoughts go astray ... Cabbages & Condoms is a restaurant ... and there is nothing sleazy about this place !!! 

For folks more trivia inclined ... the name was coined by owner Mechai Viravidya who envisioned condoms to become as ubiquitous as cabbages ( ! ) ... and they are, at least in this establishment. Apart from being on display all over ... you are also presented with free condoms along with your dinner bill instead of the usual mint :-)

 

 

 

The restaurant has a great ambience with both indoor and outdoor seating. The food is delectable and the calamari we ordered was not at all rubbery :-))

Dining here helps you contribute to a social cause ... all proceeds go to the Population and Community Development Association dedicated to AIDS prevention, promotion of safe-sex and family planning in Thailand. 

Directions : If you are taking the Sky Train get down at Asok and walk to Soi 12, Sukhumvit. The restaurant is about 500m into the lane to your right.

Would a concept like this work in India ( that is if our myriad fundamentalist groups allowed the restaurant to survive in the first place ) ??? What do you think ???

Deep in China Valley

Yesterday, with a bit of apprehension we took Deep to "China Valley" ... as our first eating-out experience with him had been a bit of a disaster. A few months ago we'd gone to Oh! Calcutta and the first thing he'd done was to pull the table cloth with the result that all the bone china dishes and glasses fell on the floor and were smashed. 

My own first memories of eating out at a Chinese restaurant is from Lagos '81 when I was six years old. We had Sweet and Sour Chicken and Chicken Sweet Corn soup. But more than the food a couple of unrelated memories remain vividly etched in my mind : 

1) We were seated on a circular table and there was this disc at the center which one could rotate to pass the dishes and sauces round the table ... I'd found the concept very interesting and for years I assumed that authentic Chinese restaurants would always have this kind of table. 

2) The restaurant had a collection of magazines and one of them had the entire story of "Rocky" in a series of snapshots from the movie ... Stallone gulping down 7 raw eggs at a go, running across the streets of Philadelphia, battling with Apollo Creed and losing the match in the end with a split decision. I became a life-time fan and rooted for Stallone through the sequels of Rocky and then Rambo ... even watched the 2006 sequel - Rocky Balboa for old times sake !!!

Deep will not remember much about his first visit to a Chinese restaurant ( unless he peeks into this blog in the future ) but for Piya and me this was a defining moment ... Deep behaved admirably and was focused on a plate of noodles from which he neatly ate one noodle at a time ... and allowed us to enjoy our food in peace ... a sign of good times to come !!!

Adieu Haji Ali !!!

The Haji Ali shrine, known as "Pearl of the Arabian Sea" ... you can see why thanks to Tyrone's photographic skills !!!

Many a times we've dutifully taken our elderly relatives visiting Mumbai for what we call our day long religious "Mumbai Darshan", covering ISKON temple, Siddhivinayak, Haji Ali, Mahalaxmi temple and Ram Krishna Ashram roughly in that sequence.

So powerful has been the word of mouth that our extended retinue of mamas & mamis, kakus & kakimas etc from Kolkata & beyond now land in Mumbai only after confirming our availability to play tour guide !!! 

Lunch break is invariably at Oh! Calcutta in Tardeo, a stone's throw from Haji Ali.  Tucking into delicacies like Shorsho Ilish, Mochar Ghonto, Prawn Malai Curry etc is always the high point of the trip for me ... then we walk down to the Haji Ali Juice Center to wash it all down with a Ganga-Jamuna-Saraswati.

Just learnt couple of weeks back that the 14th century dargah is finally being reconstructed after years of back 'n forth between the BMC and the Dargah trustees. I've myself noticed the steady deterioration over the last 8 years since I first visited Haji Ali and its only a miracle which has kept the shrine from crumbling down.

Looks like there will be a temporary stop to our Haji Ali sojourns but we'll watch out for the reconstruction progress every time we drive by the Tardeo / Heera-Panna junction and hope that the new dargah will be a worthy replacement ...

Those quirky Iranis and their Bakeries !!!

The Iranis I know are not particularly disciplinarian, mostly easy going i'd say ... but when it comes to running their Cafes and Bakeries in Mumbai they do an about turn. You cant miss a list of No-Nos which they invariably put up at the entrance ( often on slate written with chalk ... makes you wonder if they flicked it from a neighbourhood primary school ) and they abide by these written rules to the letter ... 

Nissim Ezekiel, the dark and somber poet ( remember "Night of the Scorpion" anyone ??? ), immortalised this strange Irani phenomenon in a quirky compilation of Irani No-No's : 

“No talking to cashier / No smoking / No fighting / No credit / No outside food/ No sitting long/ No talking loud / No spitting / No bargaining / No water to outsiders/ No change / No telephone/ No match sticks / No discussing gambling / No newspaper/ No combing / No beef / No leg on chair / No hard liquor allowed / No address enquiry ... by Order"

There is this tiny bakery down the road where I live, named impressively "Choice - The Irani Bakery" ... the Irani owner clearly influenced by recent Bollywood naming conventions eg. Daag - The Fire. Ok not a great example but top of mind right now ... by the way anyone on why the suffixed tagline is almost always in english ???

Yesterday on the way back from work I decided to stop by and pick up some "Shrewsbury" and "Cashew Walnut" cookies. Piya loves them ... "No Plastic bags / No Credit" was the abridged version of the No-No list, on a computer printout, which greeted me at the entrance.

This was clearly a Bollywood loving, Environmentally conscious, Tech savvy, Fiscally prudent Irani owner !!!

Purchases made, parcelled in paper bags and paid for with hard cash, I decided to take some snaps of the bakery, fished out my mobile phone and started clicking. Yes I upgraded to a mobile camera phone couple months back ... thanks to repeated snide remarks from friends ... specially one who works in Nokia and complained that I was clearly not the target audience for the Nokia 1100 with a B&W display ... I took the feedback but instead of a Nokia N series upgraded to a windows mobile Dopod ...

My Irani friend realised what I was upto and shouted "No Photography", an unwritten rule which I'm sure will be an addition to the revised No-No list when I visit next !!!

 

I'd taken a couple of shots of my favourite cookies by then though  !!!

Prithvi : keeping Theatre alive in Mumbai

The mushrooming multiplexes have dealt a severe blow to theatre in Mumbai. Hard to comprehend how inane bollywood masala flicks score over sublime plays crafted by groups like ekjute, ank, ipta, motley. Hats off to Prithvi Theatre ( and folks like Sanjana Kapoor) which provides a stage to these groups to bring us some splendid plays ...

I'd watched the historic 1000th run of "Hai Mera Dil" by Ank, a couple years back ... Dinesh Thakur's speech at the end exhorting the sparse audience to keep watching and supporting theatre was really moving. He had tears in his eyes and i had a lump in my throat.

Last weekend Piya and I were at Prithvi to watch ipta's "Kashmakash" :

Set in the Seventies, the protagonist ( Anjan Srivastava ) is influenced by his own son, brother in law ( Avtaar Gill ) local hoodlums and politicians to transform himself into a fictitious freedom fighter to earn a monthly pension from the government. Despite initial reservations, slowly he warms up to this new avatar leading to many humorous interludes ( specially the nok-jhok with his wife played by Sulabha Arya of Kantabai of Kal Ho Na Ho fame !!! ). The story takes a twist when he realizes that he has bitten off more than what he can chew and all the conniving folks who had convinced him to accept the pension had their own hidden agendas and were now out to exploit him.

The deceptions in human relationships, the dark side of indian politics and our collective loss of regard for freedom fighters ( symbolic for any individual who stands up to try and make a difference ) are the underlying messages brought out very explicitly in this hard-hitting play. A must-watch for all theatre lovers ... Anjan Srivastav is pure dynamite.

While at Prithvi do grab a bite at "Prithvi Cafe" ... its one of the coolest hang-out places in town.

The must-have is "Irish Coffee" with cream topping and a dash of rum ... a good warm up before you watch a great play !!!

New breed of coffee shops

Coffee shops like these [ café coffee day aka CCD, barrista, mocha etc ] have mushroomed all over indian cities over the last 5-6 years.

These are the new hang-out joints for the cool, contemporary college crowd. A far cry from the coffee-house on college street, kolkata opposite presidency college where we used to hang out between classes.

Its really a world apart - the ambience, conversation ...

The adda of the college street coffee house was intellectual [ or 'aatel' the cynics would say ] where folks contemplated the state of indian economy [ those were the pre-liberalization / pre-manmohan singh days when VP Singh and Chandrashekhar ruled the roost ], analzed the last movie screened in derozio hall or debated the latest moves being brewed (pun not intended) by IC & SFA recruits in preparation for elections ... Conversation in a CCD today revolves around who has the latest model of nokia cellphone, the love life of kareena kapoor or who last got chucked out of "splitsvilla" the latest reality show on MTV. Not being judgemental, guess its just a sign of priorities and tastes of a new generation.

The change is not in the coffee shops per se but the new breed sipping "latte" within.

Gujju thali lunch at Rajdhani

Independence day means freedom from counting calories !!!

So we headed out to Rajdhani @ Nirmal Lifestyles in mulund our favourite gujju thali place. We dare to lunch here only once in about six months. The food is sumptuous but loaded with ghee and they are always eager to pour more on your rotis and parathas.

Gujjus like Bongs also have a major sweet tooth maybe even more so ... Bongs end meals with mishti but gujjus apparently even start with sweets. We got a "malpoa" topped with cream to start our meal and then a ghee drenched "moong halwa" as dessert.

After such heavy duty eating I was planning to go to crossword and lounge around and check out some new authors but piya dragged me into a shopper's stop monsoon sale. I'm not sure how i'm supposed to add value to buying skirts for our nieces [specially when the few I liked were immediately rejected without explanation ] but hanging in there gamely ... Giving moral support I guess.

I see a few other guys around with similar predicament looking around with a vacant glazed gaze while their girlfriends/wives scour the store with a rare focus in their eyes and body language to grab the best bargains !

Maybe independence days should also mean freedom from shopping !!!