The Well-Fed Bong

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...