Kailash Parbat’s mirchi kachori chaat with imli and mirchi chutneys.

There are restaurants I would not visit as often as I do if they stopped serving chutney. Most times, they serve chutney that I wish was for sale, but is, for better or worse, only available during a meal at the restaurant. This, of course, would have to be no ordinary coconut or coriander-mint combination. Like kharda, that burn-inducing, garlic-scented condiment of joy, a good chutney should fit at least one of these three criteria: it should taste great by the spoonful, unadulterated; the food it is meant to accompany should not taste as good without it; and it should be easy to make a satisfying meal or snack of it, by scooping it up with roti or any bread. Here are a few restaurant chutneys that qualify.

Creamy Golden Chutney at Taste Yum
Taste Yum distinguishes itself from the other roll joints on Carter Road with its naan rolls (other stalls use rotis or pita). The fluffy, slightly chewy and tangy bread is filled with the standard chicken kebab and paneer stuffings. But what makes it truly stand out is the pale chutney that they offer in squeeze bottles. Even the owner doesn’t know the recipe for it. He buys it from a supplier in Gujarat. It’s creamy, with flecks of green chilli in it. People familiar with “golden chutney”—the more common street name for Rajkot chutney—will recognise this as a more sophisticated version. (For the original rasta version, visit Golden Bhelwala at Sikka Nagar, near Fadke Mandir in Mumbai, the chaat place that gets its name from this famous “Golden” chutney of Rajkot)
Ground Floor, Gagangiri Building, next to Yoforia, off Carter Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 6526 6531.

Masala Imli “Meetha” Chutney at Kailash Parbat
The key to KP’s pani puri is their tamarind chutney. Sure, their spicy green pani is excellent too, but a puri without any meetha chutney just doesn’t stimulate the salivary glands as much. “Meetha” is bit of a misnomer. The sugar is there just to balance out the fruity, sharp tang of the tamarind and the proprietary cumin-rich masala blend that goes into it. This chutney is versatile. It’s used in all their chaats, including the mood-altering mirchi kachori chaat, and also forms part of the topping for their dal pakwan.
Luis Belle Building, corner of 16th Road and 30th Road, opposite Shiv Sagar, Pali Naka, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2648 0080. For other locations, see here. 

The Chutney That Accompanies Prawns Thecha at Pali Bhavan
I had a not-quite-nice neighbour to whom I would say hello if I had to in the building lift simply because her cook introduced me to this glorious thecha-style Maharashtrian roasted salted peanut-garlic-green chilli chutney. I have loved the combination of flavours ever since. She chopped all three ingredients finely and then shallow fried them in peanut oil until they were crunchy and golden. The chutney smelled so fantastic that it made all the residents on our floor drool. At the week-old Pali Bhavan, the thick, light green chutney doesn’t look anything like the fried chutney, but tastes exactly like it.
1510/13 Adarsh Nagar, next to Costa Coffee, Pali Naka, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2651 9400.

Tamarind-Tomato-Onion Chutney at Samovar Cafe
Two shallow steel bowls of chutney are on every table at this eatery. Who even bothers with their green chutney? Not many, because it’s almost always slightly discoloured and seems less than fresh. It’s the other one, red and glossy, with tiny bits of onion and cilantro in it, that gets all the attention, and it should. There isn’t a single savoury dish at Samovar that is not improved by it. Parathas, toasties, roti rolls, biryani, omelette, dahi aloo chaat, I’ve poured it over everything. Sometimes I even ask for an extra bowl.
Jehangir Art Gallery, Kala Ghoda. Tel: 022 2204 7276.

“Plastic Chutney” at Bong Bong, Papaya Chutney at Kebabs and Kurries
Syrupy, with thin, transparent slices of raw papaya, and stippled with kalonji seeds for a pickle-like flavour, a well-made sweet papaya chutney beats the salty kind you get at various gathiya shops around the city. Bong Bong calls their version “plastic” chutney because the slivers of unripe vegetable look like bits of soft, colourless plastic sheets. For people who like to cut the sweetness with some tang, Kebabs & Kurries does a slightly tart version. The chutney tray arrives on the table just as diners are seated, and it’s easy to shamelessly wipe it clean even before the complimentary papads arrive.
Bong Bong, junction of 16th Road and 33rd Road, (adjacent to Khan-e-Khas), Bandra (West). Tel: 022 6555 5567; Kebab & Kurries, ITC Grand Central, 287, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Road, Parel. Tel: 022 40175110.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor atVogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Photo: Sheena Dabholkar.

In the 1940s, Badrinarayan Bhatwal Sharma came to Mumbai from Jaipur and set up a bhel stall in front of Nathalal Bhavan in Sikka Nagar. This was no ordinary bhel stall. It sold the “world’s first golden bhel”. The bhel got its name from “golden chutney”, a condiment the food-loving Sharma had invented. This chutney was called golden because it had a bright mustard hue speckled with bits of black and green, and contained yellow channa, lavingya marcha (a variety of chilli peppers), turmeric and 16 more spices among other ingredients.

This is the story 21-year-old Nimesh Sharma, the great-grandson of Badrinayan, will tell you when you visit Golden Bhelpuri House behind the clock tower in Sikka Nagar, near Bhuleshwar. GBH has occupied this spot since 1960, when Badrinarayan’s son Sitaram Sharma set up his shop here. “Badrinarayan was among the first bhelwalas in Mumbai,” says Nimesh Sharma. “But the name Sitaram Sharma is most associated with golden bhel.”

Several bhelwalas in the city have tried to replicate this channa-based chutney, even if they don’t always call it golden. But Nimesh Sharma claims that nobody has been able to recreate the layered aromas and texture of their proprietary recipe yet. Having sampled quite a few other versions of golden chutney, I’d have to agree. Nimesh Sharma says that Rajkot chutney is in fact an interpretation of golden chutney. People carry parcels of GBH’s dry chutney (which keeps forever in the fridge) all over the world, to South Africa, the UK and the USA (I can attest to this, some of my family and friends have sent care packages to my cousins studying there).

It’s near-impossible to identify the spices in it. GBH’s recipe for golden chutney has been handed down from generation to generation, and even today Sharma and his mother make the chutney at home (His father Dharmesh Sharma ran the business until he passed away four years ago, and Nimesh has since taken over). Even the staff of boys who operate the stall don’t know the exact ingredients or their proportions in the recipe.

Golden chutney tastes nothing like the chutneys offered at other bhelwalas. It is at first grainy and salty, and then the battalion of aromatic spices hits the olfactory system. It ends with a slightly chewy finish, similar-to-but-not-quite the texture of a very dry coconut chutney. This is when you fully appreciate the lavingya marcha. Your face heats up a little, your upper lip may become damp with sweat, and the sides of your tongue tingle.

The chutney can be used in anything, including sukha bhel, sev puri, or aloo chat, each of which are offered at GBH. But it is most famously mixed into golden bhel, where dry chutney is mixed with some water to loosen it up, and then tossed into the bhel made with pohe (beaten rice) instead of kurmura (puffed rice). (Vithal Bhelwala near CST also offers something called golden bhel made with pohe. But Vithal’s chutney is powdery, more like molagapudi or gunpowder, than golden.) I like GBH’s golden chutney best in a standard sukha bhel, or on lime juice-soaked sev puri. I have also bought the 100 grams parcel GBH offers, taken it home and added it to salad dressings, or spread it in sandwiches, sprinkled it on boiled rajma or peanuts, thickly applied it inside a roti roll, or mixed it with yoghurt to make a crudite dip. I suspect I’ll find more uses.

In GBH’s heyday, before the city became so insular, people from every neighbourhood and every strata of Mumbai society would come to eat at the stall. “People would place their order from there,” says Sharma, pointing to a spot about eight metres away. “The crowd around would be that big.” He says that even Sanjay Dutt and Bal Thackeray have stood in line at GBH. During their busiest years, they sold 4,000 plates of food a day. Today it’s about 100, both because the generation that made it what it was has passed on, and because of difficult circumstances in the family.

Even so, there is always a steel drum filled with 20 kilograms of golden chutney at the stall at all times, and Sharma says he goes through seven kilos of chillis a day while prepping it. The recent Commerce graduate is looking at ways to expand, and he knows there is potential. Anyone who meets him will concur that he’s also a rare specimen: one of the hippest bhelwalas in the city, a cool kid who has invested in his family’s street stall. He advertises his interest in catering opportunities on the stall’s painted menu board. “We’ve catered for an Ambani-family wedding at the Turf Club,” he says. “They brought down the best street food stalls from all over the country, and we were there.”

One golden bhel is priced at Rs20; a packet of 100 grams of golden chutney is priced at Rs25.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor atVogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Thali at Jakoi.

One day before the calender switched to 2013, I completed a small resolution I had made in 2012. I ate at Nagaland’s Kitchen in Delhi, a meal that I had planned over a year ago. I expected lots of pork, lots of Naga chillies including the celebrated/notorious Raja Marcha, and funky-smelling ingredients such as bamboo shoot and fermented beans. And that’s exactly what I got.

Then, encouraged by my meal there, I decided to embark on a tiny food trail featuring cuisines from the edges of India’s North Eastern states—food that we rarely, if ever, find in Mumbai. I spread my three meals over three days: one from Nagaland, one from Assam, and one from Arunachal Pradesh. I also checked two eateries off an intended round-up of the capital city’s state bhavan canteens that allow you to eat state-by-state across the country in just a few kilometres. It’s known that Andhra Bhavan is the best, and that Arunachal Bhavan is dreary. But even dreary places sometimes have just the thing for a cold and foggy winter night. Here’s a chronicle.

NAGALAND’S KITCHEN
S2 Uphaar Cinema Complex, Green Park Extension Market, New Delhi. Tel: 011 4608 8968.
Nagaland (along with Assam and Manipur) is one of the homes of the Raja Marcha, also known as the Bhut Jolokia. It’s one of the hottest chilli peppers in the world, ringing up a score of up to 1 million SHUs (Scoville Heat Units) on the Scoville scale (Tabasco sauce ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 SHUs.) At Nagaland’s Kitchen—which is a privately owned restaurant, as opposed to the canteen at state bhavan Nagaland House—the Raja Marcha is served up in the Raja Marcha vodka and an incendiary chutney among other dishes. The vodka is used in their signature Bloody Mary and is also offered in a shot glass with a salt rim and a wedge of lime. I asked for the shot, sniffed at it, nearly choked and then diluted it with plenty of soda and lime juice. Even then, it made my eyes leak a little. Regular Naga chillies show up in the smoked pork chilli, which is a milder dish, but only relatively. But not all of the food at Nagaland’s Kitchen does damage to your alimentary canal. Their sweet-sour-spicy batter-fried shiitake mushrooms are good enough to swear off non-fried food, for example. Akhuni, or fermented soy beans, also make up a large part of the flavour of Naga food. From the chutney we tried, it’s best to say that it’s an acquired taste. There’s a lot on the menu that requires an adventurous palate: dry fish chutney, pork entrails, fermented yam leaves. I wouldn’t recommend it for vegetarians, but for meat (especially pork) lovers and spice-seekers, Naga food reveals a whole new spectrum of flavours within Indian cuisine.

JAKOI
1 Assam House, Sardar Patel Marg, New Delhi. Tel: 011 2410 8605.
Jakoi is run much like a private restaurant, but is located in the same building as Assam House and effectively works as the state canteen, albeit slightly fancier with tablecloths and an attempt at formal service. The place is named after the traditional Assamese fishing tool called the jakoi, which is represented in the décor and in the curved triangular shape of the extensive menu. First-time visitors would do well to try one of the thalis: Parampara, non-veg, or veg. The Parampara (Rs400), served in indigenous bell metal plates and bowls, offers the largest variety of dishes and is unlimited. Unlike Naga food, Assamese cuisine is mildly spiced and relies more on fermented or dried foods, and mustard. The meal starts with khar (savoury) and ends with tenga (sour) items and includes dishes such as vegetables cooked in soda bicarb (more palatable than it sounds), a black sesame duck curry, and a sour fish curry. The standouts though were the two-sip amuse bouche-style appetiser of an amla soup tinged with cilantro leaves and mild green chillies; a side of aloo pitika (a scoop of mash with cilantro and mustard oil); and the sweet dish, akhoi (puffed rice) served with thick cream and liquid jaggery. There was also a jeera goli-sized dry paste ball of mustard seeds and tamarind, which is fun enough to eat whole.

ARUNACHAL BHAVAN CANTEEN
Arunchal Bhavan, Kautilya Marg, near Ashoka Hotel, Chanakyapuri, Delhi. Tel: 011 2301 3915.
There was no evidence of a canteen in the building. When I asked the monkey-capped guards at the reception, they seemed astonished and then jutted their chins at the corridor to the right. I followed their directions and eventually heard the sounds of a kitchen. Someone poked their head out. I asked if food was available. The chap said “Yes, yes!” and told another, presumably a waiter, to get the menus out. He led me to a room that looked like an MLA cafeteria, but one that had last been done up in the 1960s. We were the only people there. The waiter pulled out a menu from a locked cupboard, while I explained that I was there to try some Arunachali food. “Then why bother with the menu?” he said. “I’ll tell you. There is veg boil, chicken boil, and fish boil.” Arunachali food is vast and varied (with boiling as one of the primary methods of cooking), but this canteen served no thukpa, no chicken stew with rice powder and no kholam preparations, where food is cooked in bamboo tubes. The rest of the canteen’s menu was Indian-Chinese.

I expected very little. Fifteen minutes after my “chicken boil” appeared, there were only a few bones left in the dish. Indeed, the chicken was boiled, but in a light stew suffused with some key flavours of Arunachali food: ginger, garlic, green chillies, and tomatoes. The whole mustard leaves floating in it made pak choy seem as exciting as iceberg lettuce. I poured the stew over rice and sprinkled the canteen’s wet and coarse green chutney over it. It was the best boiled chicken I’ve ever had.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor atVogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

“No, you don’t get pure, authentic Koli seafood anywhere, not in the restaurants or the five-star hotels,” says Ravindra Kharde. “That’s why we wanted to have this festival.” Kharde had just led me through the bylanes of Vesava Gaon, past squat bungalows that were either dilapidated or newly painted in colours like fuchsia and neon green. We were in his family’s cottage, which we entered after stepping around a knot of women sitting at the doorstep gossiping, and cleaning and sorting tubs of shrimp and clams. Or as they called them, kupa and tisrya.

The air was thick with the odour (or if you like, aroma) of fish. It took about ten minutes to get used to it and then I couldn’t smell it anymore. Kharde showed me a lobster. “In a hotel, you would get this for Rs3,500,” he says. “At our festival, you will get the equivalent in about five-to-six pieces, from Rs350 to Rs400.” The festival he’s been telling me about is the annual Versova Koli Seafood Festival, the eighth edition of which starts this Friday, January 18.

Kharde was the founding chairman of the first edition of the festival in 2006. “There were many utsavs that took place around here then, for example the Malvani Jatrautsav (a Malvani performing arts festival),” says Kharde. “But since there was no proper Koli trust, we had no utsav of our own. This festival has brought the five Koli organisations (in the village) together.” In 2006 there were only about 30 stalls at the festival, this year over 50 of them will offer over 300 dishes, and over 25 others will offer drinks, snacks and desserts like sol kadhi, popcorn and falooda. Some stalls will be selling alcohol, and talks were on with a wine company on the day I visited Kharde.

In between all the feasting, visitors can watch cooking demos, and song and dance performances. Kharde said we can expect large crowds to join in when they perform “Mi Hai Koli” (“I Am A Koli”) and “Ya Koliwaryachi Shaan” (“The Pride of Kolis”). There’s also a competition where the young women of the community dress up in traditional barawari  (12-yard) sarees and jewellery. The top three get featured on the cover of the marketing brochure for next year’s festival. Musician Remo Fernandes comes every year, and this time, actor and dancer Prabhudeva is likely to visit too, to promote his movie ABCD. According to Kharde, celebrity sightings are common. “Even Katrina Kaif had come last year, but she was wearing a burka,” he says. “But those who knew, recognised her.”

For all its other activities, the focus at the fest however is firmly on the food. Kharde and the women (“my sisters, they all are,” he said) rattled off 20 varieties of seafood within half a minute. Apart from the usual pomfret, surmai, rawas and prawns, there will be tisrya (clams), kalwa (mussels), shark, and kapa (small tuna) on offer. Among the special Koli preparations are “bamboka bombil” (bombil that has only been halfway dried), ghol fish salan, shark kheema, bombil vade, rawa-fried mandeli and the instant sellout, Koli fish soup made with bombil, prawns, and eggplant among other ingredients.

In the first few years the stalls featured only the most popular Koli dishes, but now, according to the ladies, the growing crowds have encouraged them to take local fish and make preparations like “Chinese-style prawns, Continental, and seafood sizzlers”. Even then, they add, “every dish contains our Koli masala”. While Kharde explained the damage high diesel prices and corporate purse-net boats do to the fishing communities and local seafood species (“they decimate them”), we ate a Koli bombil curry made in a kokam gravy. If that simple home meal was anything to go by, I’m saving my appetite until Friday evening comes around.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Chaat counter at the Renaissance Convention Centre Hotel.

Have you eaten a plate of pani puri or a vada pav that costs over Rs350, not counting taxes and tips? It tastes pretty much like a milder version of the one made by your favourite street thelewala. In fact, it is supposed to taste as much like standard Mumbai street food as possible.

Five-star hotels take pains to ensure that the street food they serve on their menus is as authentic as it gets, both in flavour and in the experience of eating it. At the Renaissance Convention Centre Hotel in Powai, for instance, they serve the street food items in paatals (leaf plates) from redis (tables on wheels), and the dishes are prepared in front of the customer. At most five-stars, the staff tastes food across the most popular thelewalas in the city, including those on Chowpatty beach and Juhu beach, and then try and replicate recipes.

This is not food that needs expensive or imported ingredients, or even equipment. Anyone can learn how to make it. If my favourite pani puri-serving restaurants (Kailash Parbat and Elco) and my favourite street vendor (Jambulwadi), all offer it from Rs35 to Rs50 per plate and make a healthy profit, what you may wonder is so special about five-star hotel pani puri that is priced anywhere from Rs350 to Rs575?

A lot, it seems. It’s not so much as the ingredients themselves, but the process of selecting them, handling them, and all the overheads of running a hotel that contribute to the cost of street food in a luxury setting. “The yield (usable portion) of ingredients is lower in a hotel,” says Stany Lopes, chef de cuisine at the J. W. Marriott’s Lotus Cafe. “We don’t puree the whole tomato, or (mash) the whole potato.” At the recently-opened Shangri-La Hotel in Lower Parel, they follow a strict “vendor assurance program”, says executive chef Geoffrey Simmons. “For example, if we’re buying yoghurt, we don’t only check the yoghurt, we also go to the vendor and see how it is stored, transported, and how it arrives at the hotel.” They sanitise every raw ingredient (such as kothmir) before putting it into the grinder or chopping it, says Simmons.

Prices of street food items are fixed after factoring in food costs, and making sure the rates are consistent with the rest of the menu. While the food cost for street vendors is easily 80 to 90 per cent of their total cost, at a five-star hotel, on average, the food cost makes up only about 20 per cent of the total cost, except in the case of dishes that use expensive ingredients (which aren’t usually needed for street food items). Products with lower food costs are typically marked up to subsidise the expensive stuff. “In items like New Zealand lamb chops or Scottish salmon, hotels lose money,” says Satbir Bakshi, senior sous chef at The Oberoi. “Chaat is like tea. You wouldn’t pay as much for tea on the street as you would in a hotel. Remember, it [your food bill] pays for chefs’ salaries, the GM’s salary, presentation, electricity.”

Every hotel chef I spoke with said that the target customer for their chaat items is not the person who likes to eat on the street. The international tourist or business visitor is the guy most likely to order a Rs575 plate of pani puri. “The clientele is very different from the one in the marketplace,” says Danish Ashraf, senior chef de cuisine at the Renaissance. “They come with a mindset that things are not going to be [priced] as they are there.” The idea is to satisfy the curiosity of the tourist by providing the same flavours and textures, while assuring him that the quality of the ingredients and hygiene will save him from getting Delhi belly (most hotels admit to tweaking spice levels for international tourists). Bakshi says that wealthy Indian businessmen and their families are a big customer base too, because they are becoming increasingly conscious of the health risks from eating unhygienic food.

Lopes counts celebrities among the biggest lovers of five-star street food. Bollywood stars, we’re guessing, aren’t just concerned about the hygiene factor but also the greater chance of being recognised and mobbed if they visit a roadside thelewala. In a move that makes better economic sense for both the hotel and the patron, many five-stars now include a street food counter in their buffets.

FIVE-STAR STREET FOOD PICKS
Feel like eating your street food with fancy flatware? These are your best bets:

Buffet chaat counters are the best way to ensure you don’t get a plateful of bhel puri or dahi puri that’s been spiced and sweetened to suit the Western palate. The joy of roadside chaat is in customisation, and at Lotus Cafe, you can give them instructions like “aloo kum, limbu zyaada”.
Ground Floor, J. W. Marriott Hotel, Juhu. Tel: 022 6693 3276. Sundays, from 12.30pm to 3.30pm. Brunch buffet Rs2,300 per head without alcohol, Rs2,850 per head with alcohol; Champagne brunch Rs4,150 per head; kids’ brunch Rs1,250 per head.

The brunch buffet at the Lake View Cafe at the Renaissance hotel arguably has the biggest selection of street food, with about ten items including dabeli.
Renaissance Convention Centre Hotel, Powai. Tel: 022 6692 7550. Sunday, from 12.30pm to 4pm. Brunch Rs1,600 per head without alcohol, Rs2,200 per head with alcohol.

Is it the dahi batata puri that gets parents to set up match-making meetings for their kids at the Sea Lounge at The Taj Mahal Palace hotel? It’s their best-selling item, followed closely by the pani puri, with the pani served in shot glasses.
First Floor, Taj Mahal Palace, Colaba. Tel: 022 6665 3366. Daily, from 7am to midnight. Dahi batata puri Rs575, pani puri shot Rs575 (excluding taxes).

The architecturally-constructed dahi papri chaat at The Oberoi’s all-day cafe Fenix isn’t just fancy-looking; it’s as complex in flavour and texture as the street version.
The Oberoi, Nariman Point. Tel: 022 6632 6205. Daily, from 6.30am to 11.30pm. Dahi papdi chaat Rs450 (excluding taxes).

The candyfloss at Seven’s buffet, offered in various colours, is loved by adults and kids alike. It is served at a counter, and wound around a stick, street-style.
Shangri-La Hotel, 462 Senapati Bapat Marg, next to High Street Phoenix, Lower Parel. Tel: 022 6162 8000. Daily, from 12.30pm to 3pm and from 7pm to 11.30pm. Lunch buffet Rs1,550 per head, dinner buffet Rs1,750 per head (excluding taxes).

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Voguemagazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Ellipsis’s Rocky Road ice cream.

Twenty chefs demonstrating 30 dishes over five sessions, 12 pop-up restaurants serving 48 dishes of four bites each, and yet, most of us will pick only one four-hour session ticket and manage to fit five dishes into our tummies through the three-day Taste of Mumbai festival, which kicks off on Friday, February 22.

Anybody who loves food is going to have to spend a few hours next week poring over the schedule of demos across two open kitchens, and shortlisting from the eating, shopping and drinking options. Every decision’s flip side, therefore, will involve plenty of bite-sized sacrifices. These decisions need to be made, sooner rather than later, because tickets for each session are limited.

While all the information (restaurant and chef profiles, demo schedules) about the festival is available on the official website Tasteofmumbai.in, we decided to do some of the poring over and sifting through to help make this process easier. Here’s a guide to how to make the most of your limited time and money next weekend:

EATING
Twelve restaurants each will serve four tasting portions of dishes (three signature and one iconic). Each dish will have four bites to a serving, so the prices will be much lower than those on the restaurant menu. To try out the most number of samples, therefore, we recommend you go with three other friends, so that each person gets one bite of a each dish. Here are four menus that we’d like to try:

LIGHT, POSH AND VEGETARIAN
Caperberry (Bangalore) Molecular “spheres” of flavour in three varieties: tamarind and spice; mango and feta; mozzarella and balsamic reduction. Rs150. Stuffed morels, with fettucini, porcini foam and truffle oil. Rs300.
Kofuku Vegetarian maki. Rs100. Korean “Okonomiyaki” pancake. Rs100.
Koh Thai guava crumble with Granny Smith apple and guava compote, butterscotch-miso, and vanilla sauce. Rs200.
Ellipsis The restaurant’s signature Rocky Road dessert of cookie ice cream with liquid nitrogen-frozen chocolate rocks (contains egg). Rs200.
Cinnamon Club (London) Toffee pudding with carrot halwa roll. Rs200.

EXPERIMENTAL AND OMNIVOROUS
Cinnamon Club (London) Mumbai mutton mille feuille with balsam-smoked paprika raita. Rs250.
Graffiti (New York) Truffle, goat cheese and crab pizza for non-vegetarians, and truffle, mushroom and goat cheese pizza for vegetarians. Rs500 each.
Arola Spiced and fried chicken wings stuffed with salsify (a root vegetable called videshi kachalu in Hindi). Rs200.
Olive Bar & Kitchen Ravioli of duck confit and prunes with foie gras sauce. Rs250.
Fire (Delhi) Paan ki rasmalai. Rs150.

TWISTS ON CLASSICS
Cinnamon Club Crisp pink aubergine with sesame and tamarind sauce. Rs200.
Impresario/Smoke House Grill (Delhi) Citrus prawn tempura. Rs250.
China House Sichuan poached chicken with crushed peanuts. Rs250. Fire chicken kebab stuffed with feta, onions and pomegranate. Rs250.
Ellipsis Braised lamb shank and citrus cous cous with arugula and cucumber. Rs250.
Graffiti Chocolate caviar. Rs250.

GLOBAL COMFORT FOOD
Arola Garlic prawns. Rs250.
Smoke House Deli Spinach and ricotta ravioli. Rs200.
China House Hand-pulled dan dan noodles with chicken, peanut broth and Sichaun pickles. Rs500.
Prego Spaghetti aglio e olio, option of vegetarian, prawns or clams. Rs250.
Kofuku Black cod marinated in saikyo miso sauce. Rs500.
Olive Lamb “osso buco”, braised New Zealand lamb shanks with saffron risotto and gremolata. Rs500.
Prego Tiramisu. Rs200.
Impresario/Mocha Chocolate avalanche. Rs250.

TASTE THEATRE DEMONSTRATIONS
One ticket allows admission to only one of the five four-hour Taste of Mumbai sessions, with the first one on Friday evening and the last one on Sunday evening. During each session, there will be cooking demonstrations by Indian and international chefs at the Taste Theatre. Each session will feature a different line-up. Some chefs may offer tastings after the demo. Here’s a guide on the best dishes of the Taste Theatre, and how to select the session that works best for you. The session-wise of break up of chefs is here.

SESSION 1: FRIDAY 22, 6PM TO 10PM
For serious foodies and risotto fans looking for tips on classic skills and techniques.

Time 6.30pm to7.30pm
Chefs Alain Fabregues and Emmanuel Mollois from The Loosebox (Mundaring, near Perth, Australia)
Dish Scallops in a vermouth emulsion on saffron risotto

Time 7.45pm to 8.45pm
Chef Ritu Dalmia from Diva (Delhi)
Dish Wild berry and goat cheese risotto

SESSION 2: SATURDAY 23, NOON TO 4PM
Featuring chefs and dishes that women love.

Time 12.15pm to 1pm
Chef Vicky Ratnani from Aurus, and television show Vicky Goes Veg
Dishes Garlic chutney scallops, beet and kand falafel, scallion crema

Time 1.15pm to 2pm
Chef Pooja Dhingra from Le15
Dish Macaroons

Time 3.15pm to 4pm
Chef Saby Gorai from Olive Bar & Kitchen (Delhi)
Dishes Daulat ki chaat; marshmallow-stuffed malpua; white asparagus murabba

SESSION 3: SATURDAY 23, 6PM to 10PM
For people who like traditional foods with a twist, and oyster lovers.

Time 7.15pm to 8pm
Chef Manuel Olivera from Arola
Dish Arola-style patatas bravas

Time 8.15pm to 9pm
Chef Ajay Chopra from Westin Mumbai Garden City, former judge and co-host on MasterChef India
Dishes Compressed fruit chaat; goda-masala stuffed chicken roulade with curry leaf-tempered vegetables, coconut and tamarind sauce

Time 9.15pm to 10pm
Chef Shailendra Kekade from StoneWaterGrill (Pune)
Dishes Smoked oysters and roasted garlic bisque; oysters in pomegranate Bloody Mary shots; grilled oysters in orange gremolata; oysters Benedictine/Florentine; oysters au natural with passion fruit pearls and Tabasco air; oysters with chilli and fresh kokum mignonette

SESSION 4: SUNDAY 24, NOON TO 4PM
For people who like making and eating fun breakfasts.

Time 12.15pm to 1pm
Chef Jehangir Mehta of Graffiti and Mehtaphor (New York City)
Dish Stir-fried green bean vermicelli

Time 2.15pm to 3pm
Chef James Zam Lai Bak from Kofuku
Dish Korean “okonomiyaki” pancake with cabbage, spring onion and chicken, topped with bonito, nori and okonomiyaki sauce

Time 3.15pm to 4pm
Chef Viraf Patel from Cafe Zoe
Dishes Egg Florentine ravioli, and the cafe’s very popular truffled scrambled eggs

SESSION 5: SUNDAY 24, 6PM to 10PM
For adventurous gourmands.

Time 6.15pm to 7pm
Chef Margot Janse from Relais and Chateaux Le Quartier Francais Hotel (South Africa)
Dish Coconut ice cream with baobab hearts, caramelised macadamia nuts, honeybush butterscotch sauce and honeybush dust

Time 7.15pm to 8pm
Chef Manu Chandra, Olive Beach, LikeThatOnly, and Monkey Bar (Bangalore)
Dish Honey soy-glazed pork belly on skewers with mustard-miso sauce

Time 8.15pm to 9pm
Chef Rajesh Radhakrishnan from The Park (Chennai)
Dish Grilled prawns with black cumin, served with avocado chutney and chilli balsamic reduction

How to select which ticket to buy
Standard ticket Rs600.
This provides entry into the festival and allows the visitor to watch demos at the Taste Theatre. It’s good for people who are planning to visit multiple times, or who want to keep their food, shopping and drinking expenses limited or completely flexible.

Premium ticket Rs1,000.
In addition to the provisions of the standard ticket, this one includes Rs500 in Taste Currency, known as Crowns, which can then be spent on food, hard drinks and soft beverages, and at the exhibitors’ stalls. It offers Rs100 more value compared to the standard ticket. This option works for people who plan to visit once, want to nibble around a bit and then decide how much more to spend.

VIP Ticket Rs2,000.
Folks who buy this ticket get all sorts of perks. It starts with priority entry with a much shorter wait time, and access directly into sponsor American Express’ air-conditioned VIP lounge. They also get Rs1,000 in taste currency and a dram of Glenfiddich single malt. So, in a way, this pretty much pays for itself. Also, after the chefs finish their demos at the Taste Theatre, the come hang with the people at the VIP lounge. I’m planning to get this one. It’s good for a short, intense experience of Taste of Mumbai. It’s best for people who want to spend at least four hours at the event during a single visit and get the best value for their time and money.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Haleem at Kakori House.

Until recently, I only trusted haleem, khichda and nihari as the best kind if I ate them at friends’ weddings catered by specialists, or during a Ramzan trail through Bohri Mohalla with seasoned experts who knew their way. Recently however, I’ve noticed that these meaty joys can be found all over the city, and they’re nicely done too. Chains offer them. Fine dining restaurants offer them. Takeaway places can whip up a bagful in 10 minutes. And when Carter Road went car-less last week, the latest delivery joint offering khichda and haleem set up a stall that pretty much sold out.

Khichda at Jafferbhai’s Delhi Darbar.

How is it that dishes that take tremendous effort and time, flavours of which come from royalty centuries past, are becoming more popular today? Last month, there may have been excitement about the Desi Food Truck in New York City selling a small bowl of haleem for about Rs200 and calling it soup, but the history of the dish can be traced to the same 16th century document that informed us about kheema: the Ain-E-Akbari by Abul Fazl. There the recipe for “halim” begins thus “The meat, wheat, gram, spices, and saffron, as in the preceding.” The preceding lines outline the recipes for harisah and kashk, both of which sound like sparer and more basic versions of haleem (which continue to exist in other forms in countries like Greece).

Nihari at Kakori House.

Haleem, like kheema, is believed to have originated in Persia. But like most foods – with conquests, immigration, trade, modern conveniences – communities have made it their own, adapting the recipe to their tastes. It reached Hyderabad with the Arabs, and became popular because of the Nizams. In 2010, Hyderabadi haleem was given GI status, and last year Gati Couriers tied up with Hyderabad bakery, sweet shop and haleem purveyor Pista House to deliver their GI-certified haleem across the country.

On a simplistic level, khichda is distinguished from haleem by its texture. In haleem, the slow-cooked stew is continuously worked with a wooden mallet called a mandhreb until it becomes a rich homogenous paste. Khichda has more texture; its individual ingredients can be distinguished, with soft but whole chunks of meat. Of course, the proportions of ingredients and spices vary from cook to cook.

Nihari’s origins are thought to be closer to us both in time and place. The national dish of Pakistan is said to have been invented in 18th-century Delhi. While its origins are uncertain, this much is sure – its fortifying richness makes it ideal for breakfast. Nihari gets its mouth-coating texture from the gelatinous stock made with marrow-filled shank bone and even possibly offal, most likely jabaan or tongue. It should ideally be deeply spicy, and should have a layer of fat floating on it, topped at least with julienned ginger and finely chopped chillis, if not some more marrow. Modern life may not accommodate the traditional accompaniment of a piece of fried brain, but there’s really no excuse for cooks buying ready nihari and khichda mix on Amazon.

WHERE TO TRY THEM
Charminar
From this newest entrant in the market, call for the gelatinous, rich and red bade ki nihari, as well as the spicy khichda with plenty of bite. Call 98339 47142 to place an order.

The Golconda Bowl
Hyderabadi-style mutton haleem here is cooked for ten hours (first for five hours on wood, and then for five hours on coal), while being mashed continuously with the wooden mandhreb traditionally used to soften the dish. After the restaurant shuts, the kitchen is taken over by the haleem cooks who work at it all night. General manager Nitin Sondhi said that 70 to 80 per cent of GB’s haleem consists of boneless mutton, from which most of the fat has been removed. Hotel Metro Palace, opposite Globus Cinema, Hill Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2643 1234.

Jafferbhai’s Delhi Darbar
Their mutton khichda looks like a thick dal ki khichdi with soft cubes of boneless mutton embedded in it. It contains no red or green chillis but gets all its heat from ginger and whole black pepper. Make sure to ask for extra brishta (caramelised fried onions) and add lime to balance its richness. 70, Dinath Building, 195/197 Patthe Bapurao Road, opposite Alfred Cinema, Grant Road. Tel: 022 6163 2841. For other locations, see here. 

Kakori House
The sap green, unctuous mutton haleem is not much to look at, but the meat and spices are perfectly balanced in this glossy and ridiculously smooth paste. Skip the nihari – it looks good, but doesn’t come close to the one at Charminar. Shops 4 & 5, Building 25, Linkway CHS, Meera Tower, Oshiwara, Andheri (W). Tel: 022 6453 9950. For other locations, see here.

Olympia Coffee House
The mutton khichda here is available only as a Wednesday lunch special. It has so many fans, says owner Ilyas Saji, that it runs out within two hours after the restaurant opens at 11am. The dominant grains are broken wheat and white jowar, followed by small quantities of tuvar, masoor and mung dals, spiked with green chillis. Saji says they try to keep it mild and light, “as close to homemade as possible.” Rahim Mansion, near Colaba Police Station, Colaba Causeway, Colaba. Tel: 022 2202 1043.

Zaffran
Zaffran’s mutton nihari follows the spicier Pakistani recipe, according to owner and chef Chetan Sethi. The meat stock, which contains not just bones, but also trimmings, tongue and organ meats for the fullest extraction of flavour, is strained and combined with a paste of brown roux and browned onions, and cooked with their special in-house masala mix, which is made by grinding 12 spices into a powder. Each bowl contains two marrow bones and three pieces of boneless meat. Infiniti Mall 2, Link Road, Malad (West). Tel: 6450 2828. For other locations, see here.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Voguemagazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Remember those happy days when standalone restaurant bills didn’t include that one line? The one that is not legally mandated, the only amount that diners can rightfully refuse to pay, the one that annoys us most if our food arrives cold or late or sloppily plated? Mumbai restaurants like to call it “service charge”. We used to call it a tip.

Restaurants here started adding it to their bills in late 2010-early 2011, but it was considered unusual, even in fine dining establishments. In the last year though, only a few of the restaurants I have visited haven’t included a service charge on the bill. Among the 65-odd establishments I have reviewed in the last nine months, less than five didn’t feature it. The industry seems to have adopted a standard rate of ten per cent, though a handful of places charge a slightly lower five or eight per cent. It became more acceptable after the Finance Bill of 2011 mentioned it under “Scope of New Services”, and now it’s widespread, even though no one is legally bound to pay it.

Though, whether pre-service charge days were happier or not is a matter of perspective. Every restaurateur I spoke with said that the addition made sense, mostly because we are terrible tippers, even when we receive adequate service. “Say, a bunch of five people drew up a bill of Rs4,870, they would put Rs5,000 into the folder and leave,” says Pankil Shah, director of Neighbourhood Hospitality, which owns Woodside Inn, Woodside and The Pantry, where they charge 8 per cent as service. “On average, the total tip collection would be four to five per cent of the total billing.” All of them pointed out that a fourth of the diners wouldn’t tip at all, and most of the rest would pick up their change and drop a Rs50 or Rs100 note instead.

There are many arguments for and against gratuity being included in the bill, but while we could debate about it before, now, whether we like it or not, service charge is an industry practice that’s here to stay. (One caveat: in no case should a restaurant charge service for a takeout or delivery meal.) Of course, this means that our dining-out behaviour has adapted to it as well.

When it was first implemented, the reactions ran from confusion to indifference to rage. “Initially people didn’t realise that service charge had been included, and tipped as before,” says Deepti Dadlani, marketing head at deGustibus Hospitality (the company behind Indigo, Indigo Deli, Neel at Tote on the Turf). “Also, people were confused about the difference between service charge and service tax, so we even had a laminated card explaining taxes and charges. A few times we returned even the service tax amount if they were not convinced.” (Service tax, as with all taxes, is charged by the government, and not paying it is not an option). After a while, diners started questioning restaurants about the service charge on their bill. “People would ask us, why am I being forced to pay this charge?,” says Chetan Sethi, the chef and owner at Zaffran, which started charging ten per cent a couple of years ago. “No diner ever says it’s a good thing.”

There are various ways in which restaurants deal with diners who have a problem with service charge, and each establishment has to deal with the situation once every few months. Pradip Rozario, the owner and chef of Kurry Klub, says that he voluntarily knocks off service charge from the bill when he feels that a table has not been served well, and turns it into a lesson about teamwork for the staff. But that’s rare. If there has been no reason to complain during the meal, then most managers explain that it is company policy. If there has been a problem (rude or slow service, hygiene issues or poorly prepared food, for example) then restaurants try to make up for the lapse with other forms of what is called “service recovery” instead – by offering free desserts, or comping the whole meal, or promising the next meal on the house . “Only if the customer specifically asks to waive the service charge [because he or she is deeply disappointed], do we consider removing it from the bill,” says Dadlani. One customer threatened to take Sethi to court. “If they get very aggressive, I try to remind them that restaurants also have a sign that says ‘Rights to Admission Reserved’”. He has yet to turn a diner away though.

In recent months, since we have become familiar with that additional line on the bill, more than half the tables (among the restaurants I spoke with) leave nothing extra in the check folder, and the ones that do, only round it off for convenience. Understandably, while the number of people voluntarily tipping has heavily fallen, the amounts received by the staff as service charge have near doubled. And the distribution of the funds is more uniform, with all of it going into a kitty which is then shared among all staff members according to their job description, position and performance. Shah, for instance, has a point system, where staff members lose or gain points for their performance in the last month and are paid their service charge share accordingly.

In at least one way, service charge has become a double-edged sword for restaurateurs. In an industry with hard and long working hours as well as high rates of poaching and attrition, a measure that was supposed to attract employees has also made things more complicated. “Manpower has become quite an issue,” says Shah. “Also, at interviews now, [candidates] will turn around and ask, ‘How much is your service charge collection each month?’”

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Colette (to Linguini): How do you tell how good bread is without tasting it? Not the smell, not the look, but the *sound* of the crust. Listen.
(She presses the bread between her hands.)
Colette: Oh, symphony of crackle. Only great bread sound this way.

From the movie Ratatouille

Colette would disapprove of most of the European-style bread available in our city. And there is a lot of it. Restaurants serve a selection in their bread baskets; little bakeries in Bandra and Andheri offer French loaf and rye bread. Celejor, for example, has a section of their menu marked “Global Breads” under which they list both pav, and something called French garlic bread that looks and feels like a dinner roll. A new bakery in Worli serves olive focaccia that’s sweet and brioche that’s eggless.

There are many reasons why it’s a challenge to find good European-style bread in Mumbai. From the bakers I spoke with, I gathered that it’s a fight mainly against our weather, our water, our flour, a lack of skill and training among bakery staff, and the prevalence of pre-mixes.

Weather Woes
“With our severe humidity, a crust just won’t stay crunchy,” says restauranteur and chef Moshe Shek. “If you leave it open, the crust takes moisture from the environment; if you wrap it, it absorbs moisture from the bread.” Shek, who also supplies bread to 14 other outlets in the city, apart from retailing it from his own establishments, compares baguettes to brun pao, and says that just like the local variety, the French one has a shelf life of mere hours. One way to beat this problem is by giving the unsliced bread a quick toast in the oven at home before eating it.

The humidity and heat also means that bread proves much faster than in more temperate climates, something that is rarely accounted for. “[It is said that] a baker is different from a pastry chef because, in baking, the method of making bread keeps changing,” says Aditi Handa, the owner and baker at The Baker’s Dozen. “Our proofing time (the time it takes for the dough to rise) has become much shorter than it was in December when we opened, because the weather has changed.”

Water Problems
Chef Kelvin Cheung of Ellipsis says he has struggled hard and long to get the pretzels and the brioche at the Colaba restaurant right. “The water is very alkaline here,” he says. “And the minerals are different, so the bread tastes different.” At Indigo Deli, says chef Jaydeep Mukherjee, the water is filtered through reverse osmosis to remove the heavier minerals that don’t allow the bread to rise very well, and can lead to a dense loaf. Even if the water is purified, few people use it at the right temperature. Handa says water at a lower temperature does a better job of hydrating the dough and thus improving texture.

Flour Flaws
India produces some of the best wheat in the world, but not all of it is ideally suited to make leavened bread. The majority of bakers can’t tell the difference between varieties, and the gluten content (which is vital in bread making) can be inconsistent within the same variety. So bakers need to constantly rework their recipes, or find a reliable supplier. “The finest flour with the highest gluten content is from Karnataka, but it is exclusively exported,” says chef Manu Chandra of Olive Bar & Kitchen. “The maida we have here is very pasty, so we need to add gluten, as well as stabilisers and enhancers.” Cheung says that the existing yeast spores and bacteria in Indian flour also affect the taste. In a way, the weather, water and flour of a place are reflected in its bread. Chandra says he’s been trying to replicate pav in Bangalore, and it comes close, but doesn’t taste like the stuff off Mumbai’s streets.

Skill Shortage
Most of the chefs here said that typically when bakery boys come in for a trial session, they ask them to make a few varieties of bread. Typically, the boys will make one kind of dough, and then give it the expected shapes: baguette, focaccia, challah, Pullman loaf, brioche. It’s all the same dough, the only distinguishing factors are the shape and toppings. Mukherjee says he looks for boys from traditional bakeries who know the difference between brun and ladi pav, because they also understand that each dough has its own recipe. There are other ways to mess up perfectly good dough, by over-kneading, under-proving, and over- or undercooking, using the wrong temperature. It’s not easy to make bread without understanding the science of it.

Proofing Preferences
Alain Coumont, the head chef and founder of international Belgian cafe chain Le Pain Quotidien, says that traditional European breads do not use yeast or other additives, and therefore involve a long process of proofing and baking. Here, bakers don’t use starters to prove their bread, choosing to use yeast instead. It may provide a more convenient, quick and reliable rise, but the flavour that a good starter provides cannot be replicated.

Prevalence Of Premixes
Every bakery and restaurant that intends to serve bread gets approached by companies like Ireks, AB Mauri, and Puratos who import premixes and concentrates. When you use these, it is no longer essential to employ skilled people with an understanding of dough or bread making. The premixes are popular, and very prevalent, because they need no weighing, no mixing – in many cases all you add is water and yeast – and they allow for variety (like multi-seeded multi-grained breads, and rye bread). But premixes often contain chemicals that would never be found in artisanal bread, such as stabilisers, preservatives, and improvers (also known as flour treatment agents, they quicken the rising of the bread and improve the workability of the dough). Handa compares using them to making instant “homemade” gulab jamun from a packet.

THREE BREADS THAT RISE TO THE OCCASION
Brioche at The Table
This rich, cake-like savoury third of their bread basket is so good, you’ll eat both pieces even if it means breaking away from a low-carb diet (and you won’t need butter with it).
Ground Floor, Kalapesi Trust Building, opposite Dhanraj Mahal, below Hotel Suba Palace, Apollo Bunder Marg, Colaba. Tel: 022 2822 5000.

Pain au levain with walnuts and raisins at The Baker’s Dozen
TBD’s bread is perfectly crusty even the next day, especially after a few minutes in the oven. This levain bread is great by itself, or with grilled cheese.
9, Jayant Apartment, Appasaheb Marathe Marg, near Century Bazaar, opposite Mercedes Benz showroom, Prabhadevi. Tel: 022 6743 1313.

Baguette at Indigo Deli
The Delis’ bestseller, this bread is proofed over several hours. It isn’t quite the flavour of Paris, but it’s the closest you’ll get to it in our city.
First Floor, Palladium, Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel. Tel: 022 2498 6262. Also at: 5, Ground Floor, Pheroze Building, Apollo Bunder, near Gateway of India. Tel: 022 6655 1010. Fatima Villa, 29th Road, Pali Naka, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2643 8100. Clifton Trishul Co-operative Housing Society, off Link Road, Andheri (West). Tel: 022 2633 5709. Level Three, Phase Two, R City Mall, LBS Marg, Ghatkopar. Tel: 022 2518 1010.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

When restaurants serve you a lemon…

The rice in your risotto? It’s probably from Goa, not Italy. The scallops? There’s a chance they’re less mollusk, more stingray. That New Zealand lamb rack? Possibly came from a sheep born and bred in Delhi.

There are lots of very obvious reasons why restaurant food doesn’t necessarily contain what’s stated on the menu. The biggest one is: ingredients can be expensive and switching to cheaper substitutes is an easy way to cut costs and build profits in a margin-thin industry. Another one is erratic supplies. For example, a chef specifies that the salmon he’s serving is Scottish, but six weeks later, the shipments get stuck. He chooses to serve what’s available in the interim, instead of reworking the menu. What makes it easier to get away with is that India’s imported food industry is quite young. As a result, we’re not experienced enough to tell the difference between unfamiliar but similar ingredients – Chilean sea bass and cod, for instance.

Certainly most diners can’t, but neither can some chefs.

Without pointing fingers, it’s safe to say that each of the “substitutions” stated below happen in Mumbai’s eateries. Sometimes the switch happens further up the supply chain, with mislabeling taking place at the manufacturer or supplier level, and even the importer or restaurant doesn’t know about it. Here are some ways to tell the fake thing from the real deal:

SCALLOPS
Just like crab sticks are made from pulverised kamaboko (which is made from Japanese whitefish and not crab), scallops are often made by punching shapes out of skate fish and stingray wings or even shark meat with a cookie cutter. This is a practice common across the world, one you can even do at home. Often, the package will specify that it’s skate flesh, or imitation scallop, but that information does not make it to the diner at a restaurant. The most common way to mask these skate/stingray discs is by pre-breading and then freezing them before selling them to restaurants who serve them deep-fried. Uncooked, or merely seared, it’s easy to tell fake from real. Scallops have a smooth ivory to beige-toned, delicately sweet flesh. One dead giveaway? They have none of the striations typical of the the flesh of these winged fish.

TUNA AND SALMON
Trout are closely related to salmon (they both belong to a subfamily of the genus Salmo), of which one particular variety of large trout is called sea trout, rainbow trout, or salmon trout. It’s not always easy to tell salmon and trout apart. The flesh of trout looks a lot like the flesh of salmon, especially if the food supply of the fish has been similar. Salmon has a more full-bodied taste, but only someone who has tasted enough trout would be able tell the difference. An even bigger sin, worldwide, is salmon flesh that has been dyed. Typically, the orange-pink flesh comes from the wild fish’s carotenoid-rich diet of shellfish and krill from the ocean. But farmed salmon, which may not have access to this food, can have flesh that’s greyish. The solution is to add pellets of artificial colour to the salmon feed. One pharma company even has a SalmoFan, which gives fish farmers the option of selecting a desired shade of pink for their salmon from a range of synthetic colourant pellets (made from petrochemicals). If browning tuna is “gassed” with carbon monoxide, it will stay a healthy deep red, which may hide staleness and even mask decomposition. It’s also called tail-pipe tuna. (If you hold a piece of brown tuna near a car’s exhaust it will turn a brighter red and stay that way). Sometimes tuna is injected with dye to make its colour more intense. Unfortunately, the only way to know if a fish’s colour is natural or synthetic is by knowing where the fish comes from, or testing it in a lab.

PARMIGIANO-REGGIANO
Parmesan may be the English translation of Parmigiano-Reggiano, but often what is sold in supermarkets or shaved onto salads is nothing like the real stuff. Like champagne, this cheese can only be called Parmigiano-Reggiano if it comes from one of five specific provinces in Italy. A good grana padano, also a DOC cheese, is cheaper, and not a bad substitute, but most times what gets passed off as Parmigiano-Reggiano is a hard Australian, Dutch or processed cheese, which has none of the distinct flavour or characteristics of what is justifiably described as the “king of cheese”. Real Parmigiano will have a slight crunch due to the crystalised amino acids that break down during the aging process, is on the whiter side of pale yellow, has a definite sweet lactic aroma, and doesn’t have a stretch. This means that when you sprinkle it on soup it dissolves without becoming stringy.

MOZZARELLA DI BUFALA
It translates to mozzarella cheese made from buffalo milk, but we’ve seen a lot of cow milk bocconcini pass off as this fresh cheese. Buffalo milk has none of the yellow-orange plant pigment beta-carotene, and this is apparent in the colour of the cheese, which is much whiter than cow’s milk mozzarella. It has a much higher fat content, and so the flavour is much richer and creamier. Cow’s milk mozzarella is available for approximately Rs400 per kilo; Italian mozzarella di bufala can be anything from Rs1,600 to Rs2,000 a kilo.

LAMB
The menu may say lamb, but quite often Mumbai restaurants serve goat (lamb is young sheep.) Even mutton, technically, means meat from a grown sheep (two years old or more), but here the word has always been used interchangeably with goat meat. Goat meat is leaner, and has a stronger smell, but a milder taste than mutton. It also has longer fibres, and so it works better with longer cooking times. This mix-up is not as bad as instances of passing off Indian lamb as Australian or New Zealand lamb. The former costs less than Rs600 per kilo, the latter about Rs2,800 per kilo. If your menu says New Zealand lamb rack, but it costs only Rs800 for the dish, you’re likely to be getting local lamb. Even if you’re paying in thousands, there is still no guarantee it’s been imported.

CHILEAN SEA BASS
The Patagonian toothfish known as Chilean sea bass is not really a sea bass, but a member of the cod icefish family. Its name is just a marketing gimmick invented by a fisherman more than three decades ago, to make it sound more attractive on menus. As such, you can imagine that actual bass tastes quite different from the now overfished and endangered Patagonian toothfish, which in turn, understandably can be easily confused with black cod, especially when covered with miso. Restaurants that mention Chilean sea bass on the menu could very well be serving regular sea bass. The toothfish can cost upwards of Rs2,000 a kilo while a kilo of bass is generally about Rs700 to Rs800 a kilo. Worse, I’ve come across at least one restaurant that serves basa described on the menu as “Chilean Sea Basa”.

ARBORIO
Goan fat rice is used as a substitute for arborio or carnaroli in risotto when supplies are low or erratic, and some chefs can make it work well enough. However, there’s no way any fine dining restaurant will admit their mushroom risotto was made with the finest quality Goan fat rice, much less charge less for the dish.  One way to tell is that Goan fat rice lacks arborio’s “bite, which is easy to distinguish when you’ve tasted both. Arborio also has a more creamy aroma and texture.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Aloo tuk chaat at Zaffran.

Mumbai loves chaat, and those of us who eat on the streets here will ferociously proclaim the virtues of our favourite chaat wala. Often the chutneys are the magic ingredient, but occasionally it’s the quality of the sev, the way the veggies are sliced, the chaat masala used, or simply, somebody’s “haath” that elevates a snack into something you can’t get anywhere else but at that one stall. Street food vendors also come up with the most unusual innovations, and sometimes it’s their chaat “invention” that earns them a faithful following. Here’s my pick of the most crazy – and tasty – chaat creations available across the city.

Channa Jor Bhel and Fried Dal Bhel
Available at: Gupta Bhel Wala, on the pavement outside Khyber and Fabindia in Kala Ghoda.
Price: Rs20 each
This third-generation bhel and pani puri vendor, who sets up shop right next to Sanjay Singh’s sandwich stall, sells over a dozen varieties of chaat. If you manage to resist his regular bhel and half-hot-half-cold ragda pani puri, try his fried channa chor (chana jor) bhel or fried dal bhel, in which chanar jor and fried dal respectively replace kurmura or puffed rice. The bhels even travel well, as slightly moist chana chor or fried dal doesn’t taste bad at all. Douse the heat on your palate at either the nariyal pani wala or the nimbu pani wala, both of whom have stalls close by.
Crazy scale: ★★☆☆☆

Mirchi Kachori Chaat With Only Mirchis
Available at: Kailash Parbat, Luis Belle Building, corner of 16th Road and 30th Road, opposite Shiv Sagar, Pali Naka, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2648 0080. For other locations, see here.
Price: Rs50
“One mirchi kachori chaat, no kachori please” has been one of my standard orders at Kailash Parbat for years. What I get is six tangy and spicy masala-stuffed green chilli pakodas swathed in yoghurt and KP’s three delicious chutneys, chilli, tamarind, and kothmir-mint. Be warned though, it’s not for the faint of heart – this off-the-menu item will have you waving your hand in front of your face, wiping your watering eyes, and cooling down with spoonfuls of chilled yoghurt.
Crazy scale: ★★1/2

Manchurian Locho
Available at: Jani Khaman And Locho House, Shop No.11, Star Trade Centre, Sodawala Lane, opposite Chamunda Circle, Borivali (West). Tel: 022 2893 5653.
Price: Rs40
Locho is a bad mistake made good through the spirit of entrepreneurship. When a cook in Surat added too much water to his khaman batter, it became the base for locho. At Jani, which recently opened in Mumbai after years of success in Surat, locho has gone the way Mumbai’s street dosa and bhel have – it’s got a Chindian version, with a topping of Manchurian or Szechuan sauce along with butter, chaat masala, sev, and onions. For an additional Rs10, they’ll add cheese.
Crazy scale: ★★★★★

Aloo Bomb
Available at: Street stall behind SIES College lane, in front of National Kannada Education Society High School, Wadala.
Price: Rs2 per piece
Baby potatoes are boiled in haldi, scooped out until they are hollow (like pani puri shells) and then filled with three chutneys (a runny but potent imli chutney, a green chutney, and a red chutney), chopped onions, lime and sev to make an aloo bomb (or “bum” as it’s often pronounced). Because it substitutes deep-fried puris with boiled potatoes, the aloo bomb is healthier than both sev or pani puri. But that’s not why it’s popular. Just three pieces of this ridiculously addictive snack make for a very satisfactory meal.
Crazy scale: ★★★★1/2

Aloo Tuk Chaat
Available at: Zaffran, Infiniti Mall 2, Link Road, Malad (West). Tel: 022 6450 2828. For other locations, see here.
Price: Rs250
This inventive take on the traditional Sindhi appetiser known as aloo tuk is so popular that each outlet of Zaffran gets 50 orders for it per day. Here, after unpeeled baby potatoes are fried until almost cooked through, drained, left to cool, smashed until flattened and re-fried until crunchy, they are tossed with a tangy, sweet and spicy tamarind chutney, onions, green chillies, chaat masala, and lime juice. Unlike the Sindhi version, which is prepared with mirchi and amchur powder, Zaffran’s aloo tuk is transformed from a fried, starchy snack to a filling chaat that works as a quick meal.
Crazy scale: ★★★1/2

Toast Sev Puri
Available at: Gupta Chaat Corner, near Chheda Dry Fruit Stores, Bhanu Jyoti Building, Lakhamsi Napoo Road, Matunga (East). Tel: 98333 25573.
Price: Rs40; Rs10 extra for cheese
Imagine this: a slice of bread is buttered, slathered with green chutney, topped with six sev puris with all the fixings of chutney, boiled potato, onions, and of course sev, and then covered with another buttered slice of bread. This is then grilled and buttered some more, before being garnished with another sprinkling of sev. Gupta Chaat Corner’s bestsellers are bhel, sev puri, dahi puri, and pani puri but the toast sev puri is how it found fame.
Crazy scale: ★★★★★

Bhelpuri Sandwich
Available at: Food For Thought, Kitab Khana, Somaiya Bhavan, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Flora Fountain, Fort. Tel: 022 2284 4242.
Price: Rs220
During the period when owner Resham Sanghi was trying to come with ideas for sandwich fillings for her bookshop’s cafe, she served bhel inside a toasted sandwich to her kids. They loved it, and so it made it to the menu. Soon after, the bhelpuri sandwich became the cafe’s bestseller. Ask for extra chutney, chopped onions and tomatoes in the bhel to give the sandwich both juiciness and bite.
Crazy scale: ★★★★☆

Vitamin Bhel
Available at: Soam, Sadguru Sadan, Ground Floor, opposite Babulnath Temple, Chowpatty. Tel: 022 2369 8080.
Price: Rs155
Vitamin bhel is a mix of sprouted lentils and legumes topped with chilled yoghurt, jaggery chutney, green chutney and chopped capsicum, tomato and cucumber. It sounds like it’s good for you, and it is, but it hardly tastes like health food. Owner Pinky Chandan Dixit says the light and refreshing snack sells the most during summer, when about 30 or 40 plates are served up every day.
Crazy scale: ★★★1/2

Chicken Chaat
Available at: Food First, DLH Park, Third Floor, S. V. Road, Sundar Nagar, Goregaon (West). Tel: 022 2876 2222.
Price: Rs245
Not everything works at Food First, but their chicken chaat has become quite popular among patrons. Spicy tandoori chicken is chopped into tiny bits, and then left to chill and marinate a second time in a “chef’s special sauce”, which is dominated by the flavours of Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, sesame seeds and olive oil. Just before it’s moved to a customer’s table, the chicken chaat is tossed with kachumber and served cold.
Crazy scale: ★★★1/2

Dayaram’s Chhappan Bhog
Available at: Dayaram’s, Shop No.2, 191 Kapadiya Building, 2nd Agiary Lane, Zaveri Bazaar. Tel: 98191 59658.
Price: Rs15 per plate, Rs200 per kilogram for takeaway orders
At Dayaram’s, at least half-a-dozen busy staff members can be seen briskly tossing up chhappan bhog chaat, while a clutch of customers either wait to be served, or pay for their grab-n-go pouch of chaat and secret masala. The chaat – which may not be prepared with 56 ingredients but is divine nonetheless – is made with fried channa dal, channa chor, two kinds of chiwda, nylon sev, Kabuli channa, peanut bhajiya, and mung dal. The secret masala contains, among other things, dhaniya powder, jeera powder, black pepper, cloves, and elaichi.
Crazy scale: ★★★1/2

Pappu’s Chivda Bhel
Available at: Pappu’s, corner of Dhanji Street and 1st Agiary Lane, Zaveri Bazaar.
Price: Rs15
Pappu has a little stool with a basket, a loyal but small cult following, and a poha-chivda-chilli-lime bhel that he says is his invention. Like Dayaram, Pappu sells only one item, and claims that his chaat is not to be found anywhere else in the world.
Crazy scale: ★★★☆☆

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Thaksen Aani Mandali.

A few metres from the tony restaurants of Colaba is a market where a Rs30 plate of special dahi puri is considered an expensive meal on the street. Colaba Market, one of the oldest in the city, is busier and livelier on weekday evenings than Colaba Causeway is on weekend evenings. Young men and women walk around and check each other out, fishermen in shorts and chappals disappear behind the curtains of country liquor bars, a street vendor supplies peanuts to the Taj Mahal hotel, and designers’ assistants come to Pradhan to buy lace, borders and buttons.

Colaba Market, unlike Dhobi Talao market, has maintained its liveliness over the decades because it’s still an open market and there has been very little interference from the authorities. Strand Road, and the two streets that branch off from it, look like a village mela every day. There are some shops here that are so product specific – selling only bangles, garlic or loose spices – you wonder how the owners support their families with a thela that has no apparent system to its inventory. But they do, and have done so for generations.

The smaller shops are specifically for local people including those from Azad Nagar – a mix of fishermen’s families, and residents of the shanty town next to their homes - and the ones living in the buildings in the neighbouring areas. They all consider a walk through the market a fun way to spend an evening. While the shops may not be the ideal place to start buying your supplies from if you’re not familiar with the area, it’s worth peeking around just to get some local flavour. Here are my picks of the ones worth browsing by:

Jagprasad Bhelwala
A good place to fuel up on pani puri, sev puri and bhel before a shopping trip. There is almost always a wait, often because people take away parcels. The pani here is well balanced, neither too sour, nor too spicy, and the stall is more hygienic than the others around the market. The price doesn’t hurt either, and Jagprasad always gives a bonus puri with masala and sev as a cap to the snack.
Outside the Telephone Exchange, Strand Road. Daily, from 7.30pm to 10.30pm. Rs13 for a plate of pani puri, Rs15 for a plate of sev puri or bhel puri.

Venus Florist
Venus is in an odd spot. After Jagprasad, there is a line of minuscule shops: an open-to-the-street barbershop, mattresswallahs, and a host of tailoring and alteration units, all of which specialise in jeans, and have names like Pappu, Nasir, Nadir and Super Men’s. These are punctuated by chicken centres where the hens sit in crammed cages. “When we got the shop 71 years ago, the ‘cutting’ was done in a building behind,” said Shivaji Abbaji Gaekwad, who owns and runs the flower shop. “Now we’re used to the sounds, it doesn’t really matter.” Most of his business comes from deliveries, and between Gaekwad and his helper, they cater to customers across the city. At Venus, I buy tulsi and mogra, and order desi gulab (the kind used to make gulkand) for sharbat, cocktails and other culinary uses. Gaekwad also sells honey-scented agarbattis.
Shop No.6, Plot No.7, Strand Road. Tel: 97027 17930. Daily, from 7.30am to 10pm.

Pick Point & Co. Vegetable Seller
They may have started as a small vegetable stall in 1952, but now Pick Point is the smartest vegetable seller in all of Colaba Market. They deliver as far as Altamount Road, and are quick to mention, even to Antilia. Their vegetables are only marginally better than those of the other vendors, but what makes them stand out is the variety of products and services. If customers ask for an item, Pick Point will stock or source it. There is little logic to the variety of packaged products they keep now, but a few minutes at the shop will reveal nam pla (Thai fish sauce), feta cheese, dried mushrooms, coconut milk, meat tenderising powders, dried herbs, “hommos tahineh” cans by a company called Daily Fresh, and about five dozen more items. They never take days off, even when the rest of the market is closed.
Shops No.4 and 5, Plot No.7, Strand Road. Tel: 022 2285 6452. Daily, from 7.30am to 9.30pm.

Yash Snack Corner
Jagprasad says that Yash Snack Corner was started by a relative who trained under him. Indeed the former’s pani is better than the latter’s. But there is one thing that Yash serves that Jagprasad doesn’t. And that is Sindhi puris for pani puri and dahi puri. These puris are made from a mix of dals and and are darker, smoother and crunchier than the standard ones made from rava (semolina). They are also three times the price. Instead of in a pani puri, I’d recommend them in Yash’s “special dahi puri”. When a customer orders this (the most expensive item on the menu), he or she can also choose from three fillings – ragda, boondi, or my pick, a mash of potatoes, onions and chaat masala.
Shop No.11, Shalimar Building, (take the first right after Pick Point), Lala Nigam Road. Daily, from 5pm to 10pm. Sindhi pani puri Rs25, special dahi puri Rs30, regular pani puri Rs13.

Panalal Hiralal Gupta Peanuts
Anil Gupta sells peanuts for 14 hours a day, every day. Roasted and raw, peeled and unpeeled, big and small. Sure, he sells four kinds of kurmura, fat poha, banana chips, fat masala sev, boondi, channa jor, chikki and other fried snacks too. He even sells the Sindhi puris to Yash Snack Corner. But peanuts are his bestsellers and his biggest source of revenue for a reason – they taste really close to the famously delicious ones from Bhavnagar in Gujarat. They are always fresh, perfectly salted, with a bold crunch and sweet finish. Gupta says he supplies peanuts to the Taj. When I don’t eat half of my stash on the way home, I use it to make a peanut-green chilli-garlic chutney, homemade peanut butter, or a sweet and spicy peanut chikki. The proof of his success is in how his shop (and he) have steadily grown larger over the years, progressing from a hand cart to a 50 square feet room.
Near Shop No.11, Shalimar Building, Lala Nigam Road. Tel: 98195 89499. Daily, from 8.30am to 10.30pm. Unpeeled peanuts Rs170 per kg; small peeled peanuts Rs180 per kg, large peeled peanuts Rs225 per kg.

Gauri’s Seasonal Stall
The bejewelled Gauribai has a unique business model. She will only sell one to three things just as they hit their season, and she will sell three kinds of garlic – the slender and strong “deshi” or “gaunti” from Gujarat, a medium sized and milder one from Japalpur, and the fat, mild, and easily peeled kind called “Chinese”. At the moment she’s got jamun and totapuri mango; in a couple of weeks, it will be water chestnuts and maybe fresh peanuts in the shell; in the winter, she switches to ber and amla; during Shivratri, it’s ratalu or sweet potato.
In front of Janata Book Depot in Gala House (first left from Pick Point), near Super Garlic, Lala Nigam Road. Daily, from 9am to 1pm and from 4pm to 9pm. Jamun Rs20 for 250 grams; unpeeled deshi garlic Rs20 per kg.

Super Garlic
Javed and Amul sell heaps of garlic cloves sorted by size from this cart with the coolest name in Colaba Market. The smaller cloves are cheaper because they are the toughest to peel, says Javed. But look beyond the garlic – they sell packaged Maharashtrian chutneys including kharda and thecha, as well as derived ones such as “Kolhapuri jhatka” (made with red chillies and garlic) and “Puneri chatka”; Malvani masala powder; copra (dried coconut kernel); and Maharashtrian pickles like gud lonche (jaggery pickle) and aamba lonche (mango pickle).
In front of Janata Book Depot in Gala House, (first left from Pick Point) near Super Garlic, Lala Nigam Road. Daily, from 9am to 1pm and from 4pm to 9pm. Dried coconut Rs120 per kg; chutneys Rs17 per packet; Malvani masala Rs250 per kg.

Thaksen Aani Mandali (or Thaksen and Co) 
The father and son that run this shop are the fourth and fifth generation owners of a family business that started out as a sprout shop. The business continues to sell green vatana, chowli, matki (moth beans), chana, black chana, and mung sprouts, including one basket with everything tossed together for ussal. But if you poke your head under the various packets dangling all around the front of the cart you’re likely to find rice-based snacks shaped like wheels, tubes and macaroni that you fry before eating. There’s also spicy rice khichiyas, black sesame powder chutney, and fresh kokam. I recommend the mixed sprouts for ussal (they have the fastest turnover), and the khichiyas if you’re feeling adventurous.
Below Akbar House, entrance of Rajawadkar Lane, diagonally opposite Colaba Fish Market. Tel: 022 2282 5187. Monday to Saturday, from 7am to 9pm; Sunday, closed.

Premchand Gupta Kharvas
Follow the sound of temple bells to the end of Rajawadkar Lane. Outside the door of the Hanuman mandir is Premchand Gupta’s 38-year-old stall, where he sells kharvas so fresh, it’s still warm. This sweet preparation made from bovine colustrum (the first milk produced by a cow after she gives birth) is a hit with many of the kids accompanying their parents shopping. Gupta cleanly slices a chunk of the flan-like steamed milk, wraps it in banana leaf, weighs it, cuts it into bite-sized pieces and hands it over to his eager young customers. The entire process takes less than five seconds.
Outside Hanuman Mandir, end of Rajawadkar Lane. Daily, from 6pm to 10.30pm. Rs14 for 100 grams.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Foie gras burger at Two One Two.

In a city with vegetarian “districts”, meat is still managing to have its moment in the spotlight. Mumbai is now home to Facebook groups such as The Porkaholics and Mumbai Meat Marathon, where members seek out and connect over their love for carnivorous meals. Today, friends make plans to go eat a burger that weighs over half a kilo at Cafe Sundance, and wait for Saturday because it’s the day rabbit stew is available at Imbiss.

This new mania for meat isn’t because it wasn’t available before. After all, steak, duck meat, and offal have been on offer at a variety of city eateries, from those in five-star hotels to those in Bohri Mohalla, for at least two generations now. What’s changed is the demand for them.

“I’m selling five times more duck sausage now than I did in the initial months after our September 2012 opening.” - Bruce Rodrigues, owner of Imbiss

“People ask for the (double bacon) BBLT with a side of bacon fries. I ask them if they want a bacon milkshake with that, and they ask ‘You have that?’. We’re working on a bacon dip. The other day a vegetarian diner had our bacon fries and enjoyed them enough to come back for more.”

“It’s the anti-vegetarian backlash. It’s [the food equivalent of ] saying, ‘I’m Black and I’m proud of it.’” – Deesh Mariwala, founder of Mumbai Meat Marathon

People in the restaurant industry all seem to agree – it’s the current generation, people in their 20s and 30s, that makes up the bulk of today’s meat-mad, carnivorous consumers. It’s this smartphone-owning, social media-savvy, MasterChef-watching demographic that’s far more adventurous in its food choices than their parents, and are less likely to follow religious mores about eschewing beef or pork. “The intake of red meat has increased obscenely,” says Deepti Dadlani, the head of marketing at deGustibus Hospitality, the company behind Indigo, Indigo Deli, and Neel at Tote on the Turf. “It’s like when you repress a teenager for too long at home, the moment they get their freedom, they will go wild.”

As a result, there are now more kinds of meat, both locally produced and imported, available than ever before. Remember 2010, when it was hard to find half a dozen decent beef burgers in this city? Now there are half a dozen in Bandra alone. “Now chicken is the boring meat,” says Dadlani. “You rarely hear someone say, ‘this chicken rocked!’”

With sales of about 250 kilograms a week, pork is currently the most popular of all the meats available at Farm Products in Colaba, followed by beef. The staff says that the meat section is most frequented by people in their 20s and 30s. And they know their meat, identifying and asking for cuts such as sirloin and shank. “Kids from all communities come,” says owner Luisa Rocha.

People for instance, like journalist Afsha Khan, who loves chorizo. “If there is chorizo in hell, I don’t mind [going to hell],” says Khan. “Of course my parents frown upon it, but they also know we make our own choices. They are not our influencers, our friends are.” The evolution in eating habits can also be attributed to that now almost century-old shaper of social habits: television. We watch contestants grapple with crackling and rabbit stew on MasterChef Australia, and eagerly follow Anthony Bourdain’s adventures with sheep testicles and pigs’ ears as if he were a culinary Indiana Jones embarking on an epic culinary treasure hunt.

And things are only going to get better for the meat-loving Mumbaikar. Bandra-based Imbiss, for instance, is opening an outlet in Colaba. Not only will it have the regular menu, there will also be guinea fowl, quail, oxtail, beef cheek and tongue, as well as 12 kinds of sausages from around the world including a Scottish blood sausage.

Gresham Fernandes, group executive chef at Impresario Hospitality (which owns Smoke House Deli, Salt Water Cafe and Mocha, among others), who started the Swine Dining series of dinners at Salt Water Cafe two years ago, says the increased demand for meat-centric dishes has led chefs too to up their game. “Food as a conversation starter is back in fashion, and chefs are improving their skills,” he says. “They’re learning how to braise and smoke, and they also are willing to come out and explain things to the [apprehensive] diner [like], for example, how oxtail is a good cut to eat.”

Fernandes said that some of the best French fries he’s had were during his stage at Noma in Copenhagen, where they are made with kidney fat instead of oil. Back home, he attempted making khari biscuits using rendered foie gras fat for one batch, and kidney fat for another. “Oh god, they were amazing,” he says. “Kidney fat is the new butter.”

WHERE TO FEAST
The Entire Menu At Imbiss
Make a meal of smoked pork with fat and rind, kassler (which Rodrigues describes as “bacon on the bone”), veal schnitzel, duck sausage, and crackling.
Duck sausage, smoked pork, schnitzel Rs180; kassler, Rs200; crackling, Rs150.
Ben-O-Lil Haven, 14 Varoda Road, off Hill Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2641 6485.

The Sundance Sasquatch At Cafe Sundance
Over half a kilo of meat, bacon rashers, a fried egg – this burger is the biggest in the city. Rs900.
Eros Building, Ground Floor, opposite Oval Maidan, Churchgate. Tel: 022 2202 6212.

Bacon And Onion Soup At Indigo Deli
For this soup, which is a frequent special of the day, onions are caramelised with bacon, and then simmered with whey stock. Each bowlful is topped with a dollop of sour cream. Rs385 plus taxes.
First Floor, Palladium, Phoenix Mills, Lower Parel. Tel: 022 2498 6262. Also at: 5, Ground Floor, Pheroze Building, Apollo Bunder, near Gateway of India. Tel: 022 6655 1010. Fatima Villa, 29th Road, Pali Naka, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2643 8100. Clifton Trishul Co-operative Housing Society, off Link Road, Andheri (West). Tel: 022 2633 5709. Level Three, Phase Two, R City Mall, LBS Marg, Ghatkopar. Tel: 022 2518 1010.

Foie Gras Burger At Two One Two
This is not a chicken or beef burger with a topping of foie gras; the entire patty is foie gras, and the only trimmings are onion marmalade and marinated tomatoes. Rs1,500 plus taxes.
12-A, Hornby Vellard Estate, opposite Nehru Centre, next to the BMW Showroom, Worli. Tel: 022 2490 1994.

Bacon Cake
One kilo of densely-packed mince, cheese, bacon, fried ham, and sausages, topped with more bacon. Rs1,500.
Call Roycin D’Souza on 99876 01065 to place an order.

BBLT With Bacon Fries At Between Breads
Twice the bacon of a regular BLT with lettuce, tomato, grilled onions and mayo in a toasted roll, and fries drizzled with bacon fat and tossed with more bacon. BBLT, Rs219; bacon fries, Rs99.
16th Road, near Hawaiian Shack, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2604 5577.

Braised Spanish Chorizo At The Tasting Room
A main course-sized portion of sliced and braised chorizo served on a pile of buttery mash surrounded by a pool of rich, deep beer jus. Rs650 plus taxes.
First Floor, Good Earth, Raghuvanshi Mills Compound, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel. Tel: 022 6528 5284.

Kakuni At Kofuku 
Kakuni is a popular local dish in Nagasaki, prepared by braising a square chunk of pork belly in soy sauce, mirin, sake and sugar. It may be an appetiser at Kofuku, but hold off on ordering the mains until you’ve finished it. Rs450.
Kenilworth Shopping Arcade, Second Floor, 33rd Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 6710 5105.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

From left, sundried gawar and karela, and sundried yogurt-stuffed chillies.

One day, 43 years ago, Ulhasnagar resident Ashok Mirchandani was sitting at the corner of First Pasta Lane with his dad, spending a relaxed afternoon in Colaba, when someone came up to him and asked him a question that changed his life and the fortunes of his family: Do you know where I can buy good Sindhi papads around here?

Mirchandani decided to make these papads his business. A few weeks later, he set up shop at that corner, selling Sindhi papads and a handful of Sindhi pickles from a thela. He was 15 years old.

Barring family occasions, emergencies, and Sundays, Mirchandani has been at that corner, from 11am to 7pm, every day for the last 43 years. His merchandise has grown to include over 100 speciality items, all sold from the same cart about the size of a small desk. From Monday through Saturday, he travels to and from Ulhasnagar daily, undertaking a commute of five hours, to replenish stocks for his street stall, which he has named Ashok Papadwala.

He’s not the only one. There are similar stalls in each of Mumbai’s Sindhi pockets such as Chembur and Khar, and all of them go by similar monikers: the owner’s name followed by Papadwala (see Where To Buy, below). Even their inventories are almost identical – papads, pickles, dried rice- or vegetable-based wafers and other snacks that need to be fried before they can be eaten (kachrie), wadi (sun-dried spicy lentil nuggets used to flavour gravies and pulaos), lotus stems (bhee), and fresh lotus seeds (dodi).

This particular combination of food items is available only in these Sindhi Papadwala shops. Their supplies come not from factories, but from housewives in Ulhasnagar, who run product-specific cottage industries from their homes. One woman makes pickles, another one makes rice-based snacks, another salts and dries bhindi and karela on her building terrace or in her balcony, and so on. The owners pick up supplies from each of these homes, repackage them and carry them to their shops.

Folks who are not Sindhi, or haven’t been introduced to these edibles would not know what to do with many of them. They look strange, and methods of preparing them are not intuitive. What for instance, do you do with something that looks like a mud-covered perforated stem with furry ends (bhee), or a modak-shaped rice dumpling that looks like it’s been left out in the sun for weeks (fulwadi).

But more people should get to know about these shops. I’m not saying this because I am Sindhi, but because there’s so much adventurous sampling to be done, and especially because almost every shop I know of is shutting down after the current owner retires. The market’s gone cold, according to the owners. I’ve heard various iterations of the same set of reasons – the next generation doesn’t value these snacks as much; a call-centre employee earns more money than people in this business; it’s not a “cool enough” industry to enter or sustain; it takes too much tedious back-breaking work for what it gives. Already, some of them are beginning to dilute their inventory and stocking generic snacks like unbranded soya chunks.

Think about it, before the word artisanal became cool, these products already fit the bill. One shop’s Sindhi papad or wadi doesn’t taste like any other’s, because they buy them from different women who use their own version of the recipe and make them by hand. The best part is, if you ask the owners how to prepare anything from their shop, whether it’s kachries or wadi or bhee, they will give you detailed instructions, and even a recipe. Way before sun-dried tomatoes showed up in India and on fancy restaurants’ menus, we’d been eating salted and sun-dried bhindi, karela, and gawar (cluster beans). And we still should. They’re not as posh, but they’re tremendous fun, and it will be a shame if they disappear.

WHERE TO BUY
Ashok Papadwala
Mirchandani sells the spiciest “Amritsari” papad we’ve seen in the city; about half of it is cumin and black pepper. He has 12 other varieties of papad (Disco papad and Poona papad, anyone?) and is happy to explain the nuances of each. Try his gawar kachrie; dry chilli curd (chillies that have been stuffed with yoghurt and dried); ready-to-fry dried potato wafers; and Sindhi mung wadi. Skip the bhee, better stuff is found at Vashi Papadwala in Khar.
Outside Kailash Parbat, First Pasta Lane, off Colaba Causeway, Colaba. Tel: 93235 07147. Open Monday to Saturday, from 11am to 7pm; Sunday, closed.

Prakash Papadwala
Shankar Stores, known to Sindhis as Ochi Passari, is the only Papadwala-style pavement shop that has managed to move to a grocery store format. But naturally, they sell generic food products in addition to Sindhi items, and they’re more expensive. Across the street, Prakash Papadwala offers similar goods for cheaper prices. Sindhis come to him to buy “B Pipermint” and pudina arag, both edible tinctures used to treat indigestion. He also sells two confections that make the most of that beloved Sindhi combination of fried besan and sugar – sev chikki, and nakul (small gathiyas coated with fine, frothy sugar).
Opposite Shankar Stores, outside Sindhu Halwai, near Vrindavan restaurant, 3rd Road, Khar (West). Tel: 93232 90672. Open Monday to Saturday, from noon to 8pm; Sunday, closed.

Vashi Papadwala
Vashi Kishinchand Laungani sells some excellent bhee and dodi (fresh lotus seeds). In addition to all the Papadwala goods, he also offers ready-to-fry samosas from (popular Sion eatery) Guru Kripa, and heart-shaped, stuffed potato patties.
On the pavement in front of Punjab Sindh Paneer Centre, Durga Niwas, near Khar Telephone Exchange and Citywalk Shoes, Khar Pali Road, Khar (West). Tel: 93230 81472. Open Monday to Saturday, from 2.30pm to 9.30pm; Sunday, closed.

Shankar Papadwala
Vashi’s younger brother Shankar set up his Papadwala shop on the same pavement. At his stall, snag dried drumstick flowers; brine-based, mustardy onion pickle; spicy alu papad, and wheat laddus. His round, stuffed potato patties sell pretty well too, about 100 packets per day.
On the pavement in front of Punjab Sindh Paneer Centre, Durga Niwas, near Khar Telephone Exchange and Citywalk Shoes, Khar Pali Road, Khar (West). Tel: 93209 17563. Open Monday to Saturday, from 1pm to 9pm; Sunday, closed.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

New Sardar owner V. N. Prabhu says the restaurant will shut shop by the end of the year. Photo: Sohrab Nicholson.

We’ve raved about New Sardar’s excellent sandwiches and their “batsal”. Now we recommend that if you plan to eat there, it’s best you go sooner rather than later. The building it’s located in is slated to undergo redevelopment by the end of this year, and owner V. N. Prabhu has decided not to reopen it after that. It’s been the family business for 80 years now, but lately he’s been finding it very hard to sustain it. In the last few months, regulars at New Sardar have already seen the symptoms. It has become a modified QSR (quick service restaurant). Twenty of the service staff have been let go. The food is as delicious as always, but it’s served on disposable plates.

New Sardar is not the only one. Grade II and Grade III restaurants (the grades depend on quality of service, hygiene, and licence fees) across the city are endangered. These are not just Irani cafes, many of which have garnered attention for shutting shop in recent years. According to one Sanitary Officer who wishes to remain anonymous, in A Ward alone (that includes Navy Nagar, Colaba, Cuffe Parade, Marine Drive and Fort), 22 restaurants have surrendered their licences in the last month. These include Rasraj Juice Centre in Fort, Sanman and Suruchi in New Marine Lines, and Kamat’s on D. N. Road.

Some of these are not so great, but many of them are important to the neighbourhoods they occupy. These are places where Rs7,000 will buy you three meals every day for a year. Many of them are iconic eateries that are over half a century old, even if they haven’t got the press that Britannia has. They feed the working population around them, and often serve community-specific, traditional foods that work for their clientele. That formula clearly doesn’t work very well any more.

I spoke with the owners of three restaurants that have crossed the 60-year mark. They don’t expect their establishments to last more than a couple of years from now. Here’s why:

SHORTAGE OF STAFF
This does not bode well for these eateries. Sunil Saigal, owner of Punjab Moti Halwai on Cawasji Patel Street in Fort, says that in February, he had 23 staff members; now, he has only 11. Many migrant workers from the northern states went home for Holi and never came back. The large, airy restaurant was established in 1956 and is still famous for its samosas and lassi, so everyone should go try them while it’s still around.

Nobody wants to work in Grade II or III restaurant out of choice. “A dishwasher’s job has a bigger stigma attached to it than a watchman’s,” says Saigal. Since these restaurants are so reasonably priced, they pay relatively low salaries. The older staff sticks around because of job security, but it’s hard to find young, cheap labour. “Places that serve traditional food need bigger kitchens and knowledgeable staff,” says Prabhu. “The work for our ussal starts one day in advance because we grind our own masalas. Even getting the right colour in the masala for dosa is an art. No fresh blood is coming into this sort of restaurant. If it continues like this, traditional food will go the way of the burger (McDonald’s). They require workers, we require artists.”

COSTS AND GOVERNMENT LEVIES
Not just food costs (which have certainly risen alarmingly), even rising electricity bills, LPG prices, and government levies like VAT and service tax are eating into the profits of these low-cost restaurants. “VAT was introduced to replace octroi,” says Kamlakar Shenoy, who owns Sadguru, a restaurant opposite Sandhurst Road railway station, that was opened in 1930 and serves primarily Maharashtrian and Udupi snacks. “Octroi has stayed, VAT has been expanded to cover more categories and the rate has been increased, and now the government is introducing an even more draconian tax called LBT; it’s the government that is creating inflation.” Shenoy says that a lot of these levies don’t make any sense. “Why should I pay service tax on my total revenue when only 20 per cent of the seats at Sadguru are in a windowless air-conditioned section?” he asks. “Why is it considered a luxury here when all the government offices are air-conditioned with our tax money? If the government is going to take 25 per cent of my income in various levies, what am I going to earn?” These taxes show up at the bottom of the bill in the posher places, but you never see them on the receipt at places such as these (though it does not mean that they aren’t already included in the still-affordable menu prices).

COMPETITION AND CUSTOMERS
The city’s restaurant scene is growing. It’s sometimes hard to pick just two restaurants to review each week. And pretty much everyone from hawkers to the new takeaway place down the road is competition for the old places, especially since they don’t offer anything remotely trendy. “If you’re serving Italian or Chinese food, you can prepare it with ready sauces and spice mixes, charge Rs120 to Rs150 a dish, and people will pay for it,” says Prabhu. “It’s not like I can charge those rates here for dosa and sandwich.”

Saigal says that staff from these restaurants leave and start their own hawker’s stalls, serving the same food, but at very low prices, because they don’t have any overheads. Until a few years ago, Punjab Moti Halwai would generate 500 receipts a day. These days, the dining hall often has only a dozen people at any given time.

PROPERTY ISSUES
As in the case of New Sardar, a lot of these restaurants occupy large spaces in areas of the city that have become very attractive to developers, who are then willing to pay the restaurant owners to leave the premises. The offer is tempting. The migrant labour that made up their initial business has all but disappeared, there are not enough footfalls any more, and overheads are only increasing. It makes sense, as owner or tenant, to take a large stash of cash, put it in the bank, and put your feet up, instead of going through the increasingly tedious grind of running a simple, moderately priced, low-profit restaurant.

The building that Punjab Moti Halwai is situated in has been bought by a new owner who is working with Saigal to find new occupants. From the interest they’ve garnered, it’s evidently the sort of space that will work well for banks. “The day I get my price, ” he says, “I’m going to call it a day.”

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

A burger at Cafe Sundance.

We just can’t seem to get enough of burgers. They’re showing up on menus all over the city. We have eateries dedicated to them, such as Gostana and Burgs. Stand-alone restaurants, like Indigo Deli, Woodside Inn, Café Sundance, and The Table, count burgers among the most popular and bestselling items on their menus. Ketan Kadam, partner at Café Sundance and Two One Two Bar and Grill, will open the mini-burger outlet Sliders by the end of this month. Neighbourhood Hospitality, which owns Woodside Inn, will soon launch a brand called The Woodside Burger Shop, with plans to have outlets across Mumbai. Even new Italian establishment Ristorante Prego has a slider on its menu. A search for “burger” on Zomato yields almost 500 results.

This only seems like the start of a pretty big trend. In the last month, Los Angeles-based chains Fatburger and The Counter announced that they are setting up shop in India. Well, actually dozens of shops. What’s strange about this is that most of our burgers aren’t really burgers in the original sense. By definition (in dictionaries such as the Merriam-Webster and the Oxford English Dictionary), a burger is a ground beef patty, usually assumed to be made from the meat of a cow. Patties made with other kinds of meat and veggies are adaptations.

The origin and history of the burger may be murky, with several people claiming to have invented it, but there is no record of the earliest ones being made with anything but beef. Technically, beef is not, or should not, be available in Mumbai. According to the Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act of 1976, cow slaughter is totally prohibited in the state. It is, as in several other Indian states, a cognisable offence that attracts a fine and jail sentence (states like Kerala and Nagaland, however, do permit the slaughter of cows). The import of beef, and products containing beef, is also prohibited in India. So most of what passes off as beef in our city is the meat of the Asian water buffalo, or carabeef. (Unless it is being mislabeled and illegally imported, which is not that difficult because of our bendable laws.) Buffalo meat is much leaner, tougher, and darker than cow meat, and often tastes gamier. India, in fact, is the largest exporter of carabeef in the world.

American chains that are keen on launching in India have built their reputation purely on their cow beef burgers, but as things stand, they will not be able to (legally) sell them here. Fatburger has already announced that they will only be offering modern adaptations of the American patties, made of chicken, turkey, vegetables or legumes. They’re playing it safe not only because of the laws, but also perhaps because of religious sentiments, and because they likely don’t want to risk a potential political backlash.

Local eateries are adapting their own techniques and recipes to work with Indian carabeef. Paresh Chhabria, co-owner of Between Breads, says that comparing beef and carabeef is like comparing chicken and lamb. They’re different meats, but it’s not that carabeef is unsuitable for burgers. “In theory, buffalo, if treated right, makes [for] fantastic burgers,” says Kelvin Cheung, chef at Ellipsis, who offers a burger with foie butter and mushroom duxelles at the restaurant. “It is also much healthier, as it contains many nutrients. Buffalo [meat] will always be leaner than beef and therefore contains less fat and fewer calories. But this also means it’s less delicious, because fat equals flavour.”

The flavour of most meat depends on several things including the animal’s breed, age, feed and amount of activity. In inexperienced hands, Indian carabeef can be tough, chewy and dry. The biggest challenge then with Indian carabeef is to keep the meat tender and moist. Chefs in Mumbai have learned how to treat it differently, so that it results in a decent patty. Ravi Syal, chef at Between Breads, selects the undercut, “the least worked muscle”, and minces it at the restaurant, instead of buying pre-minced meat. Alex Sanchez, chef at The Table, has come up with techniques to keep the meat moist, despite its low fat content. “Typically, a burger should have about 25 per cent fat,” he says. “But buffalo meat has only five per cent.” Some of the techniques he’s tried include adding fat, and finding ways for the patty to retain it. Kadam said that at Two One Two, the burger patty is cooked sous vide to keep it tender, and at Café Sundance they’ve worked hard on the marinade. Buffalo meat has thus been developed as a successful substitute, and most chefs say that the only people who can tell the difference are folks who have lived abroad and eaten plenty of beef burgers.

Steaks made from carabeef, like burgers from it, have the same qualities of leanness and gaminess. However, unlike burgers, there’s not much you can do to make them more moist. Sanchez said that whenever he serves carabeef steaks, he marinates the meat with pineapple juice – just long enough to tenderise it, but not so long that it tastes of pineapple – and bastes it with butter after. Nevertheless, our love for bovine meat is only growing stronger. “Seventy per cent of the burgers sold during Woodside Inn’s annual Beer and Burger Festival are beef burgers,” says Abhishek Honawar, partner at Neighbourhood Hospitality. “Ten per cent are vegetarian, and the rest are chicken, seafood, and other meats.” He feels that a burger adds casual glamour to a menu, and more restaurants are catching on to the idea. Deepti Dadlani, head of marketing at deGustibus Hospitality, the company behind Indigo Deli – which won our first burger taste test – believes that burgers are doing well in general because people have realised the versatility of a patty in a bun. “There is so much you can do with a burger,” Dadlani says. “It’s bar food, it’s a satisfying lunch, and it can be a quick dinner.”

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Toast sev puri at Gupta Chaat Corner.

Certain kinds of food are particularly comforting during the rains: fried, fatty, hot, soupy, meaty, crunchy. The following is a list of snacks, mini-meals and main courses I plan to eat this monsoon. It covers time-tested classics like kachori and Sindhi curry, as well as crazy concoctions such as Mexican bhel and toast sev puri.

Chilli Cheese Fries and Pizza Fries at The J
Shop No.3, Ground Floor, Vaswani Mansion, opposite H. R. College, Churchgate. Tel: 98200 27118.
The J has revised parts of its menu, but there was never any chance of the bestselling chilli cheese fries being altered or dropped. A paper cone is filled with French fries and topped with cheddar-jalapeno sauce. Also on offer are the recently-launched pizza fries, where the chips are tossed with melted mozzarella and pizza marinara sauce. Fried, fatty, and crunchy? Yes, yes and yes. Chili cheese fries, Rs80; pizza fries, Rs100.

Chorizo Pao at Grub Shup
Opposite Mahim Station, near Cafe Coffee Day, Mahim. Tel: 022 2446 4306.
Owner Meldan D’Cunha, who also runs Soul Fry in Bandra and The Local in Fort, knows his Goan food. At Grub Shup, crusty pao soaks up the fat from spicy choriz that’s been sautéed with onions to make for a hearty yet affordable snack that won’t burn a hole in your stomach or your wallet. Rs90.

Cornflake-Crusted Basa at The Serpis’ Wild Side Cafe
Opposite St Andrew’s Church, Chimbai Road, off Hill Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 98704 83976.
The Serpis’s version of fish and chips is particularly excellent because the crust is made of cornflakes. If basa’s biggest virtue is its butteriness, then this crunchy coating makes this dish a textural delight. We plan to order this when we’re craving pakodas (and happen to be in Bandra). It’s just as hot and crunchy but without the sogginess. Rs250.

Duck Sausage at Imbiss
Shop No.5, Ben O Lil Haven Co-operative Housing Society, Waroda Cross Road, off Hill Road, Bandra (West). Tel: 022 2641 4985. Also at Ground Floor, Pipewala Building, opposite Camy Wafers, next To Kailash Parbat, 4th Pasta Lane, Colaba. Tel: 022 2202 0455.
Forget duck confit, Peking duck, and duck spring rolls. If you or a friend want to try duck for the first time, this is the introductory dish I’d suggest. The coarsely minced duck meat is soft, crumbly and rich with flavour, but not at all gamey. Rs180 at the Bandra outlet, Rs225 at the Colaba branch.

Garlic Kheer at Jantar Mantar
Plot No.G5, A. B. Nair Road, near Juhu Church, Juhu. Tel: 86553 44771.
This dish may never be Instagram-worthy but just one spoonful is enough for the rich flavour of roasted garlic to fill your head. Take it along as dessert to a friend’s iftaar party, or eat it warm and use it to lift your mood when you’ve got the sniffles. Rs120.

Idli Burger at Shree Sunders
Bhandarkar Road, diagonally opposite Ram Ashraya, behind Kabutarkhana, Matunga (East). Tel: 022 2416 9215.
If you get drenched during a shopping trip to LBS market, walk into Shree Sunders and order the idli burger – it will beat getting a pudla, a steamed idli, or a vegetable sandwich, because it happens to be a combination of all three. A golden-fried idli is sliced through into two halves, which are then smeared with green chutney and layered with slices of tomato, cucumber, onion, cheese and tomato omelet (besan pudla) to make an “idli burger”. I discovered this snack while conducting research for the Mumbai Boss Taste Trail through Matunga, and as far weird foods go, this is surprisingly fun to eat. Rs75.

Indonesian Chicken Wrap at Wraps and Rolls
Skyzone, High Street Phoenix, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel. Tel: 022 6528 6555. For other loations see here.
Every time I order this wrap, the staff warn me that it’s fairly fiery. Filled with cylinders of roasted chicken mince, sambal (a South-East Asian chilli-based sauce), and sliced onions and capsicum, it’s certain to crank up your internal thermostat. Just make sure they don’t undercook the flatbread. Rs85.

Kachori and Lassi at Punjabi Moti Halwai Karachiwala
Savla Chambers, 40 Cawasji Patel Street, Fort. Tel: 022 2204 5678.
This one makes my list especially because this is quite likely the last year in which we will be able to walk to Punjabi Moti in the rains and stop for a freshly fried kachori and a glass of creamy sweet (or salted) lassi. Single kachori, Rs15; glass of lassi, Rs22.

Loca Cuscurro at Loca Loca
8, Vora Building, 3rd Road, Khar. Tel: 022 2648 6233.
The staff at Loca Loca will tell you this dish is “Mexican bhel”, and that’s a pretty spot-on if pithy description. Crumbled nachos and sev puri are tossed with chopped bell peppers, jalapenos and onions; the mixture, which is served in a paper cone, is then sprinkled with lime juice, and topped with a touch of chaat masala. One round of this bar snack is good enough for two people lounging over a slow drink. Rs125.

Nachos Del Sol at Zen Café
KSL House, Raghuvanshi Mills, Senapati Bapat Marg, Lower Parel. Tel: 022 2498 4825.
Cold nachos aren’t the first thing that comes to most people’s mind when they think of monsoon-friendly fare. At Zen Café however, there’s a special pleasure in eating them by yourself in the cool quiet of the restaurant, with your nose in a book, and the sound of the rain outside. The nachos, fittingly arranged like rays of a sun, come topped with beans, piquant pico de gallo, and grated cheese. Rs210.

Sindhi Curry with Rice at Royal Sindh
Shop No.2, Ground Floor, opposite Jewel Shopping Centre, J. P. Road, Versova, Andheri (West). Tel: 022 6535 6625.
When it’s wet and mucky outside, hot and sour, tom yum and good ol’ tomato soup have nothing on a bowlful of this besan-based stew made with potatoes, carrots and drumsticks flavoured with tamarind and fenugreek seeds. Royal Sindh’s owners use their family recipe, and the result is a kadhi that tastes just like someone’s grandma made it. Rs140.

Toast Sev Puri at Gupta Chaat Corner
Near Chheda Dry Fruit Stores, Bhanu Jyoti Building, Lakhamsi Napoo Road, Matunga (East). Tel: 98333 25573.
This is how I enjoy the taste of sev puri during the monsoon without having to worry about getting ill. Gupta prepares sev puri, with all the fixings, on a slice of bread, covers it with another slice, and then toasts it. He cuts the toast into six bite-sized rectangles and tops it with more sev. It’s so popular that he claims to sell over a 100 of these every day. Rs40; Rs10 extra for cheese.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

Mmm methi.

Why we hate spinach and yoghurt, or love karela and bacon may be a matter of genetics, life experiences, or familiarity. Last week, when I was in Hong Kong, I tried century eggs for the first time, and though I did not barf, I strongly doubt that I will be craving them anytime soon. These preserved eggs have a jellied brown “white”, a grey-green yolk, and a smell something akin to a Sulabh Shauchalaya. I was very glad for the pickled ginger they gave with the eggs. I shall admit that for me, ammonia and sulphur are acquired, unfamiliar food smells.

There is no shortage of ingredients in Indian cuisine that are as abhorrent to many people. There are people with quirks – a friend hates eating anything white, another has given up baby brinjals because they remind him of roaches, and a third thinks ripe papayas and bananas stink. Then there are foods that sharply polarise opinion, the kind that divide families and friends (try waving methi under a Parsi friend’s nose and witness the facial contortions that follow). Here are a few others that incite disgust and delight:

Fenugreek leaves and seeds
In the hallways of apartment complexes in the Western world, there is a distinct scent that gives away the presence of an Indian immigrant household: fenugreek. More than cardamom or red chillies, the one ingredient that heralds our love for spice is methi in all its forms: seeds, fresh leaves and dried leaves (kasuri methi). For those who love it, it has a wonderful, earthy, bittersweet aroma. For those who don’t, it smells like strong maple syrup at best, and rancid garbage, dirty goat, or ripe body odour. The culprit for this aroma is sotolon, a highly powerful aromatic compound that affects the smell of our sweat and urine. Among foods that make you stink, methi is on par with garlic and raw onions.

Certain communities love fenugreek. Gujaratis make a dried chutney with ground fenugreek seeds, Sindhis use the seeds to flavour their kadhi, in Rajasthan they make a sweet relish called methi ki launji. The best way to enjoy methi without any of the odorous after-effects is to grow it at home, and to use the young, sweet shoots as a salad microgreen.

Jackfruit
From December to June, markets in Mumbai celebrate jackfruit season. There are dedicated handcarts, with adept sellers who peel and clean the fruit all day. It’s a joy watching them work through the spiny skin and sticky jelly inside; amateurs trying this could easily take off a finger or stab a nerve in their hands. Not so much fun for everyone is the smell that pervades fruit markets during these months; perhaps this is why, in recent years, jackfruit sellers have started covering the peeled ripe fruit with clear yellow plastic. Two compounds are responsible for the fermented cashew- and banana-like aromas of the ripe jackfruit: 2-methylbutyl acetate, and ethyl-3 methylbutanoate. They also make it smell, to some people, like sweaty hair, and dirty socks.

When it’s not ripe, and only as smelly as a freshly cut potato, jackfruit can put off people in other ways. Its meaty texture – it can be used as a substitute for mutton and when crumb fried, can pass off as fish cakes – is precisely why some vegetarians find it hard to swallow. Like with most unpleasant foods, a great way to get initiated into the jackfruit fan club is by eating it deep fried. Fried jackfruit chips, available in wafer shops around Matunga, taste delicious even to jackfruit haters. Chheda Stores in the Bhanu Jyoti building on Lakhamsi Napoo Road (Tel: 022 2414 4245) always has some in stock.

Liver and kidney
The two most commonly available forms of offal in Mumbai are victims of deep revulsion. To some, these organs’ jobs of processing toxins make them disgusting, to others it’s the smell (kidney can smell like piss) or the shoe leather-like, mouth-drying texture. Plenty of people hate them for all three reasons. Liver, however, can be delicious, when, for instance, lightly sauteed in spices on a tawa. Foie gras, the fattened liver of goose or duck, is considered a delicacy by the French. Possibly the best way to enjoy liver is as a pâté, or mousse-like paste made with fatty liver that is seasoned, and often served with a sweet, fruity aspic or preserve, to be spread on little toasts, and enjoyed in small bites of head-filling aroma. People who like both liver and kidney will agree that they taste excellent in pie, or chopped into kheema masala.

Both are very nutritious. Liver is rich in iron, vitamins A and B12 and folate. Kidneys contain selenium, B12, iron and zinc, along with all the fat-soluble vitamins. Smart cooks neutralise kidneys’s strong taste by brining them before cooking them very gently, to prevent them from becoming tough.

Bottle gourd, lady’s fingers and drumsticks
Disliked individually or collectively, these three vegetables are considered by detractors to have textural faults that cannot be made up by their flavour virtues. Bottle gourd or doodhi is too mushy; lady’s finger or bhindi is too slimy; and drumsticks are too woody. Fans of theirs, on the other hand, like the butteriness of doodhi, especially when paired with nutty channa dal; feel that deep-fried bhindi topped with masala makes potato wafers taste dull in comparison; and believe that the act of scraping out the flesh of drumsticks with their incisors, edamame-style, is addictive, meditative, and delicious.

Take a cue from the Guajarati muthiya, and use doodhi in an eggless cake. It provides moisture and texture quite the same way that zucchini improves cake. At Mangoes, the Mangalorean and Goan restaurant in Orlem, owner Sheldon Fernandes says that customers who have always hated bhindi like it in the eatery’s prawn and okra curry, even though it’s not fried, because he controls the cooking time and technique to make sure the slime gets broken down. Methods of doing this include adding acid to the dish (via lime or tomatoes), drying or roasting it before cooking it, and salting it at the very end. Drumsticks, alas, are not as easy to tackle – they take work to prepare and eat because they require much scraping, and have an acquired, slightly bitter, vegetal taste.

Asafoetida (Hing)
Any ingredient that has the word “foetid” in its name can’t be entirely pleasant. Hing’s sulfurous compounds make this resin (which seeps from the rhizome of the ferula herb) smell like flatulence or rotten eggs – possibly why it is also called devil’s dung. But once you temper it in a little oil, the sharp, pervasive odours turn into the soft aromas of sweet onion, roasted garlic, and warm spice. Hing is used in dals and other dishes that are hard to digest because it has many antiflatulent, stomach-soothing properties. In Thailand, a tincture called Mahahing is sold in chemist’s shops. Mothers apply it on infants’ bellies to cure them of colic. So while it smells like flatulence, it actually reduces the chances of it occurring.

The biggest grouse with hing is that when kept in the kitchen, its raw pungency seeps into cabinets and other ingredients. But for most families who like cooking with it, the occasional sulfurous blast is not a big deal, especially since there is no substitute to hing. An airtight container also helps. My favourite way to enjoy asafoetida is to temper it in ghee until it foams, add bits of green chillies, a pinch of rock salt, and then quick roast makhana or popped lotus seeds in it. As a TV-watching snack, this beats popcorn.

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.

On the day I received my copy of First Food: A Taste of India’s Diversity, I read it from start to finish in a couple of hours. In its 160-odd pages of text and pictures, it contains dozens of short essays, and about a 100 recipes, covering everything from aegle marmelos (the fruit better known as bael or wood apple or stone apple) to zea mays (aka corn).

First Food has been published by the research and advocacy organisation Centre for Science and Environment, in association with its fortnightly science and environment magazine, Down To Earth. Along with essays and recipes, the book contains narrative stories about edible plants (fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, etc.) that are native to India but have been threatened or neglected by us. “It is about linking our food with our culture and its historical importance,” says Vibha Varshney, the co-editor of the book, and the science editor of Down To Earth. “Most of these foods are part of our biodiversity, which is getting lost.”

The idea for First Food crystallised only in 2010, but some of the pieces in it date back to 2002, the year that Down To Earth started a food section that would feature articles about India’s edible biodiversity. The book is a collection of features from the magazine. Through them we learn that many of our everyday foods have surprising qualities. For instance, drumstick seeds have the inherent ability to purify water; and guar gum, which comes from gavar beans, is used as a stabiliser in ice cream. We also come to know about edibles rarely, if ever, found in Mumbai markets, such as jute leaves, bhangjeera seed (which is related to Japanese shiso), and omavalli or Indian borage plants.

Most of the essays centre on one plant and provide a vast primer to it, touching upon its history, place of origin, mythology and lore, regions of cultivation, medicinal uses, nutritional value, botanical structure, and its names in various languages. They also list the chemical compounds contained within the plant, and describe the ways in which different communities prepare it. There is of course a description of its flavour, and a simple recipe. Though it sounds terribly dry, by the end of the book I was hungry, curious, and in the mood for a much more adventurous next meal. I also had a page full of notes that will lead to many, many Google searches over the next few weeks.

The narrative essays, on the other hand, talk about dying traditions and techniques through personal stories. My favourite one is written by Bharat Lal Seth, in which he talks about the bacterial component of his grandmother’s dowry. At the time of her daughter’s wedding, Seth’s great-grandmother carefully dipped a piece of muslin in yoghurt, put it out to dry and wrapped it in paper before giving it to her. Perhaps, she felt it was the best way to pass on the family’s (yoghurt) culture to the next generation.

Even for people who are not interested in biodiversity or in fascinating trivia about India’s edible plants, First Food makes for an excellent recipe book. Varshney said that the book is, by design, organised like a menu card. Its sections are titled loosely after courses, or the elements of a thali – breakfast and snacks, meals, chutneys and pickles, beverages, and sweets. The recipes are challenging, not because they require expert kitchen skills, but because of the effort required to procure the ingredients.

While the book doesn’t list any stores, it specifies the regions in which these plants grow, so it seems like the best way to get hold of the ingredients is to find a supplier in those places, or to visit them yourself. Some of the most intriguing dishes listed are the savoury laddoos made with mahua flowers, and a chutney made with bhang seeds, apricots, mint and coriander – both items that can be made with just one turn of the wrist to start the grinder. “The beauty of rural Indian cooking is that it is very simple,” says Varshney. “We’ve started eating very commercially processed food. We wanted to show that making breakfast cereal out of makhana is as simple as opening a packet of cornflakes.”

First Food: A Taste of India’s Diversity, edited by Sunita Narain and Vibha Varshney, is available online at Cseindia.org for Rs950.

Every week, there are at least two new restaurants that are new enough to qualify for reviews. Yet, when friends or family ask me, “What’s a new place that is good? What you would recommend?” I struggle to find an answer.

This is a city that is going food mad, yes. But so little of it is truly great. Once in six months, at best, ONE new restaurant will blow my socks off. Often, a few months later, it too concedes to mediocrity. Most times, trying out a new place involves eating astonishingly average food at all-day cafes and delis, which are trying their best to imitate older, successful all-day cafes, delis, chains, or even coffee shops.

Going by the openings over the last year, this is what seems to work best: a low-risk format serving a very long but standard menu of unadventurous soups, salads, sandwiches, pizzas, desserts, and all-day breakfasts. In other words, the food scene in Mumbai is fast becoming a rash of boringly familiar poor imitations. What’s on the plate hardly matters, or is certainly less important than the location and the price.

Yes, we have made considerable progress in the last few years. We have restaurants such as The Table and Ellipsis that are taking risks and helping us expand our ideas about good food. They offer us flavour and texture combinations through techniques that we haven’t seen before in the city, in the form of dishes that look like pieces of art, and draw influences from around the globe without them ever falling into the category of multi-cuisine. We also have new family-run eateries like Mi Maratha, Royal Sindh, and even an upscale chain in Rajdhani’s Rasovara, to remind us of our diverse local cuisine. But are we a great food city by any global measure? Not quite.

I got thinking about this a couple of weeks ago, when I read this article in The Washington Post. It says, “Great food cities are ones with a discernible tradition, ones that have good grocery stores and markets; many small stores run by people with single-minded devotion to food craft — to charcuterie, coffee, bread, cheese and ice cream — and relatively easy access to really good produce and other ingredients.”

In recent months, we’ve had food entrepreneurs give the city artisanal bread shops, cookie-catering cars, gourmet kebab sandwich stalls and home-grown Chevre. It seems like an exciting time to be a part of the industry. But really – these excite us more because they are the exceptions rather than the rule. A couple of truly novel food ideas come along every year, and they occupy us, even keep us enraptured, for months. In great food cities around the world – such as Paris, or New York, or Hong Kong, or Sydney – scores of such businesses open every month, and most of them are very good.

“The bureaucracy and local bodies offer no support structure for entrepreneurs [in the food industry],” says Gauri Devidayal, owner of The Table. “It’s all very off-putting for restaurateurs who want to do everything by the book.” Here’s an example: it’s been six months since the city got its first microbrewery, but it is yet to start serving house brews. That is six months of a massive investment in brewing equipment, all of it idle. In the meanwhile, Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune, all have busy and successful microbreweries.

What we do have is foods that are iconic of our city. We have fantastic street food. We have an interesting and rich food history. Mumbai contains multiple communities, and pockets in the city reflect their food tastes and traditions. However, we haven’t got the diversity of cuisine that develops in cities that attract immigrants. Instead, self-declared food experts abound on social media, and marketing helps mask mediocrity. We take pictures of every pizza we eat, but neglect the various kinds of paniyaram. It’s been over two years since this was published, but it still rings true.

We have supermarket chains that pay more attention to imported packaged goods, or iceberg lettuce, and less to local delicacies like the massively nutritious bathua (also called tanjaliya) greens, or the five varieties of dried red chillies available at any self-respecting masalewala. Devidayal says that even for restaurants, getting a consistent supply of varied ingredients is extremely difficult. It’s part of the reason why restaurants have daily changing menus.

We’re also a difficult, somewhat unadventurous, and price-conscious market. “People playing it safe is perhaps a reflection of the times,” says Mangal Dalal, Restaurant Week India co-founder. “[There was a while during which] Mexican places got shot down because we grew up on New Yorker.”

We may not be a globally great food city yet, but there is hope in numbers. Perhaps this proliferation of restaurants and recent enthusiasm for new ideas and products in food is part of the process that gets us there. “Right now we’re trying to catch up with quantity,” says Dalal. “Over time this means we’ll catch up with quality. Once people stop accepting mediocre places, they will have to stop being mediocre.”

Roshni Bajaj Sanghvi is a Mumbai-based food journalist, a contributing editor at Vogue magazine, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York City, and the restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.