Mayur Bakery.
This past weekend, I spent eight hours in Alibag and ate four meals, each of which I would go back for.
BREAKFAST
One of the best (as well as cleanest and most professionally-run) bakeries I have been to in India is in Alibag. Mayur Bakery, founded by Vidya Vasant Patil in 1977, offers khari, chakli, karanji and a dozen other treats that I would happily take the ferry across to eat. I found out about the place four years ago through my friend Anjuli Pandit. Vidya Vasant Patil is her aunt, for whom Alibag village became home after marriage.
After completing a two-year confectionery course in Pune, she opened Mayur with two bakers and a couple of wood-fired ovens. Today there are over 40 employees at Mayur, each of whom are local Konkanis, and many of whom are women.
After you alight the ferry, make your way to the heart of Alibag town and to Mayur. Get a kokum sherbet or an aam panna (or carry your own thermos of tea), find a spot at the table and get one of the smiling, flour-dusted staff to give you a selection of snacks. Carry home a bagful of khari, a fluffy sponge cake, chaklis, some bread, and some sev, then gawp at the bill. I bought five things and paid less than Rs150.
Mayur Bakery, Tilak Road, opposite SBI, Alibag. Tel: 021 4122 4189.
Veg thali at Sanman.
LUNCH
If you show your appreciation for the food at Sanman, one of the older waiters is likely to come around and give you a quick look through their photo album. The album is always at the cash counter, and it features Bollywood actors, Marathi film stars, and politicians, either smiling over Sanman’s fried fish, posing with the owner, or being snapped mid-meal.
Sanman has been around for 40 years, when there were scant eating options in Alibag. It serves Gomantak food, spicy coconut-y gravies, fried fish and shellfish including crabs, clams and mussels, rice plates and special thalis, biryani, and sol kadi. To end the meal, there’s firm-as-cheese, lightly-sweet kharwas, and individual packs of a locally manufactured, chilled, gelatin-free coconut water jelly with cubes of tender coconut flesh. During these dog days, you might want to bring back a case home to Mumbai.
We had a special mutton rice plate (Rs190) with chunks of bone-in mutton in the sort of gravy that makes you slowly break into a sweat; bhakris as fluffy as muslin; sol kadi, rice and a vati of mutton gravy. The special veg thali (Rs100) had coconut-laced dal, and four very delicious sabzis, each vastly different from the other – buttery potato mash, slightly sweet capsicum, black-eyed beans, and green peas and potatoes. On the next table, a contingent of cops were eating a late lunch with such an air of familiarity, you’d think it was their dinner table at home.
Sanman, Ganesh Krupa Building, Israel Lane, Alibag. Tel: 021 4122 2314.
Happy Tummy food truck.
EVENING SNACK
A walk along Alibag Beach at sundown typically involves snacking on bhel, pani puri, sev puri, bhutta, gola, ‘Mewad’ ice cream, and popcorn. There are two to four options for each of these, at the start of the beach – it’s a bit like how Chowpatty beach used to be 30 years ago. The competition ensures that everyone stays on their toes in both prices and flavour.
“Alibag locals who work in Mumbai take the morning ferry to the city and the evening ferry from Gateway of India,” says resident Sameer Bhagat. “When more Mumbai tourists started coming here [15 to 20 years ago], our locals got inspired by the street food offerings at Gateway and decided to set up similar stalls here.”
Bhagat and his partner Praful Naik run Happy Tummy, Alibag’s only food truck, which opened in February. They were colleagues in a company when they came up with the idea. They got all the necessary licences for a restaurant, and requested local politicians to encourage this new restaurant format as a way to figure out laws for more food trucks.
The plan is to franchise the model, which is why, optimistically, the side of the truck says, “India’s Fastest Growing Food Startup”. Only sandwiches and burgers are made on board the truck, by a slightly diffident-looking fellow. Everything else is prepared at a small kitchen a few metres away as ovens are not allowed on the truck yet. The food is in the genre of Haji Ali Juice Centre’s, unsophisticated but satisfying. On average, Happy Tummy feeds 200 customers a day. Prices range from Rs20 for a sandwich to Rs130 for a chicken kheema pizza.
Happy Tummy, Alibag Beach, Alibag. Tel: 0 77190 52233.
DINNER
Anjuli told me that the best food to be found in Alibag is not in its restaurants. Employees at Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers’ Alibag unit and other locals who commute to Mumbai have, for decades, relied on food from other people’s homes. Among the best home cooks is Nitin Burande, who makes “gharelu” Malvani, Goan and Gomantak food from his seaside cottage. He started the catering service 20 years ago when he was asked to leave his job. His son was one and a half months old, and he had to find a way to support his family. A friend in nearby Nagaon Beach, who had a small catering business, helped Burande in setting up a home kitchen that sells food to order.
Burande’s first order came from a group of 150 Reliance employees who were walking along Akshi beach asking people for a a place to eat. His friend brought his family over, and together they prepared thalis, snacks, and chai for the group. Even though he charged them only Rs60 per head, he made a very encouraging profit of about 50 per cent. He could support his family again.
To try Nitin Burande’s food, call him as soon as you get off the ferry and decide on a pick-up point and time. We picked Akshi Bus Stop. At 5pm, just before we headed back to Mandwa Jetty, his nephews arrived on a moped with a bagful of dishes. We got semi-dry chicken masala with onions and red chillies, fried fish steaks, coconut-rich, spicy fish curry, rice, chapatis and a bottle of sol kadi, all for Rs500. It was, as he said, “gharelu” and delicious. The sol kadi was the best we’ve had. I plan to order ten litres the next time I visit Alibag.
Nitin Burande. Tel: 98812 13094.
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 a restaurant reviewer for the Hindustan Times newspaper in Mumbai.