The Well-Fed Bong

My last trip to Kolkata was unexciting foodwise; what with flight delays, traffic jams and work there wasn’t enough time left for anything useful, but on the way to the airport, I stopped at an old favourite – Rahmania . Rahmania has been at this Park Circus location for ages (people say a hundred years) but now the building that houses it (and the other great – Shiraz ) is being reconstructed into some anonymous multistoried matchbox. Shiraz moved across the street, occupying the space that used to be Tandoor Mahal many years ago but Rahmania stays put. Its space is much reduced, the cracked walls propped up with rickety iron scaffolding while the restaurant plies its business, there seems to hang an air of defiance and desperation over it all. The kitchen is dispersed into the newly built concrete pillars of the building being constructed in a bizarre ritual of co-existence. The place seems smaller than it used to be, and some of that already tiny space is now taken up by storage o...

I visited the streets of old Delhi after many years. One goes to Delhi quite often, but nowadays towers of Gurgaon divert attention from the fabulous treasures of Chandni Chowk. This time, however, an accommodation website pointed me to the Maidens, a hotel situated in the quaintly named Civil Lines and appropriately full of chandeliers, heritage certificates and directions to the nearest Metro station. Nowadays, visiting old Delhi isn't what it used to be. Nadir shah or the Mongols had to climb mountains and kill a million people, but I discovered (with some help from a uniformed doorman) that nowadays you could step out of the hotel, pop down some escalators, get groped by some khaki and swishy minutes later you're hearing Chandni Chowk platform is on the left hand side. Inspired by an article in the Mint about nahari joints, I decided on a pass to Chandni Chowk (where I’d gone the last time in search of parathewali galli), head on to the next stop - Chawri Bazaar - and then...

Sunday is an ideal day for overeating, and where better but a five-star brunch. This Sunday, feeling decidedly chinese, I headed to the Pan Asian at the ITC Grand Maratha for their Sunday Brunch. It turns out that the Chinese are in the middle of their Moon Festival , the chowmein version of our very own Kojagiri (or Lakshmi) Poornima. Related to the equinox, this day considered to be the brightest full moon in the year (and a good day to see the glitter of money). Luckily, food is involved – specially those strange creations called moon cakes. The ITC is my favourite far eastern Sunday Brunch. The only other choice nearby – Spices at the JW Marriot – does have a good spread too (more sushi choices) but they tend to have the same things on their menu every Sunday (right down to the desserts). Overall, I like the ITC better -great dim sum, polished Peking duck, unlimited salmon and tuna sashimi, a grill counter, a decent choice of salads, main courses and desserts. This time they...

I still haven’t quite figured out the spelling. Is it Biriyani or Biryani? I tried the latter spelling on my last blog about it, its time to try the former one now. A rose by any other name… In any case, I found myself in Kochi (or Cochin) which, interestingly enough, has its own direct claim to the original biriyani. There seems to be little doubt that biriyani, along with horses and melons and Taj Mahal domes came from tied to the coattails of Muslim travellers. in the case of the Malabar Coast, the travellers came in the form of seafaring traders, who seem to have teamed up with the Shettys and started their own biriyani outlets without bothering to consult the Lakhnavis. Indeed, Google tells me the Malabar Moplah biriyani bears a remarkable resemblance to the Yemeni Mandi (no, I haven’t tried the mandi myself). Mattancherry is where many of Kochi’s Muslims settled down, and Mattancherry is also were Kayeekas started fifty years ago. To make life easier in the jet age, I did...

A couple of months ago, I was cycling from eatery to eatery in Singapore. Now Singapore is full of fancy imported restaurants, but there nevertheless really is something called original traditional Singaporean food - cuisine that originated here and continues to be eaten here. This is where the Chinese clashed (sometimes literally) with Malays, Tamilians, Indonesians (to say nothing of the odd Englishman) and formed all kinds of subcultures. Every block has a subgenre, a slightly different mix of the basic cultural ingredients expressed (mostly) in the food. Smothered it may be by malls, manicured it may be to the point of oblivion, but Singapore has managed to keep its home and street food alive and flourishing. And the secret is in the hawker centres. Singapore has many types of hawker centres – fancy ones inside fancy malls, remote residential areas like Boon Lay or Ang Mo Kio, tourist traps such as Lau Pat Sat or Newton, ethnic enclaves such as Geylang or Little India or messy con...

Much of my life in IIT was spent at Chedis, which quite literally means hole but apparently refers to the owners name. In those days Chedis had lawn seating, a banyan tree and starlight dinners, was open 24x7 and served reliably greasy food. I was quite pleased, therefore, to see Chedis still around (though considerably hemmed in by the new IIT boundary wall), still open 24x7 and still as reliably greasy-spoon as before. Now it had actual printed menu and marble tabletops but luckily, still sells the regulars, prominently displayed right below the name, upstaged only by Top Ramen Curry (a brand unknown in our time). Our life at Chedis revolved around a few things – Maggi, Special Chai, Bread Bhujiya and two unique offerings - Mohile Special and Tinku Special - available nowhere else in the world, not even elsewhere at IIT. Mohile was the nickname of a student credited with the invention of this concoction (he was still trying to graduate when I joined), while Tinku was a cook at Ch...

Chennai again drew me to a forgettably convenient meal at Saravana Bhavan . I find the food utterly pedestrian, but somehow the sheer convenience of this Wal-Mart of Udipis sneaks me in. Yes, they have every kind of food on earth - I noticed Lebanese and fusion this time (vegetarian is probably the only reason sushi is left out). Unfortunately, its all fairly dull routine stuff. Not incompetent, but about as exciting as a Michael Jackson rendition of Bach to a western classical fan. Luckily, that’s not all I ate in Chennai. My visits to Chennai aren’t very frequent, but I’ve noticed on my last few trips an increasing proliferation of signs announcing biryani. Unlike Mumbai (where nearly every eatery offers biryani right next to manchurian in an encyclopaedia of a menu) these places  headlining it, staking its reputation and business model on the mutton and chicken variants of this one dish. All very interesting for the biryani lover. It was this in mind that I got my host of th...

The end of summer is traditionally Hilsa feasting time in Bengal, but things are much more muddled in Mumbai. In any case, O Calcutta announced the Hilsa Festival in August, and we promptly started salivating. There’s nothing like a bit of independence to inspire the Bengali bhadralok to a feast, so we headed into Tardeo’s innards on the very next day – Sunday, August 16 2009. This OnlyFish-turned-OCalcutta tucked away in a shady-sounding Hotel Rosewood in the bylanes of Tardeo is my favourite in the now humungous chain that Anjan Chatterjee has built, but it turned out to be firmly in the middle of a renovation. The restaurant was still open, though now it was tucked away in what must have been a conference room at the same shadily named hotel. There were, however, plenty of displays announcing that the hilsa we were after was definitely on the menu. Basically, the festival was six different preparations of hilsa; what the Frenchophiles among us call entrees. Of course fried hils...

A few days ago, I had a very expensive lunch. Beer, two courses and no dessert the bill came to a staggering Rs 6,000 for two. No, I wasn’t on Wall Street chewing gold-plated hamburgers (that would have cost more). We were in Mumbai, on a normal weekday lunch, with a friend who had just been offered a great job (yesyes, he paid). The restaurant was Pure , in the Taj Lands End. This was only the second time I was eating lunch there, and I must say its a restaurant of interest for more than just the prices on the menu. Though usually empty at lunch (indeed, both times we were the only diners) its a gorgeous space – pastel latticework faintly reminiscent of Mughal architecture, large tables, stylish flower centerpieces, service more polished than the polite but intrusive kinds you usually get (check the Taj site out for all the brand names attached, if you’re inclined). Its also backed by a culinary philosophy that the waiters and the menu try to explain. Michel Nischan , the chef-inspi...

The emu looks like a kidsmenu version of the ostrich, but is apparently only distantly related (not even the same continent). I had seen a hundred emus from faraway in Karjat and three up close in a resort in Hampi (one wanted to befriend my shoe). A friend told me that it has a reputation for being stubborn, (but I think that’s before being cooked). And I knew they had three toes (ostriches have only two) - basically, I considered myself an expert on emus. So this emu expert was driving through the old NH4 highway, looking for some dhaba named after Toni. Signs for the dhaba peppered the highway once we were past Lonavala, and eventually we were informed in warm tones that they accept all major credit cards, do come on in. Toni da dhaba wasn’t exactly tony but it definitely was well-known - teeming as it was with people. At the back right where we parked the car was a cage full of emus. Not only that, the massive menu had menu scattered all over it, including a section of Ton...

Food, sometimes, is not just about food. Sometimes its about the stories behind food and once in a while the story is as big as the food. Here is one such story. Its just story, no food was harmed in the process… I didn’t know very much about Ambala, but I had the vague idea that it was in Punjab (it's in Haryana) and that it was somehow associated with dhabas (The only time I'd heard of Ambala before was when I went mutton-hunting in Los Angeles and discovered Ambala Dhaba ). Obviously, dreams of mutton again swimming in my head, I went looking on the Internet for famous dhabas in Ambala. So the story starts. It turns out Ambala does indeed have a dhaba that’s famous. The Hindustan Times warned me that the famous one is full of copies – apparently there were over ten of them (even a reference to one in Chandigarh ). This piqued my interest – anything with this much imitation must be worthy of flattery) - so we headed to Ambala. On the GT Road (now all expressway-looking...