The Well-Fed Bong

  The 50 best restaurants in the world have been named again by Restaurant Magazine. I haven’t blogged about this list in a while ( since 2005 , in fact) but lists are like motichoor laddos – I can’t resist them. In what seems a significant irony the list this time is sponsored by the very antithesis of cooking – natural, untouched-by-hand mineral water from S. Pellegrino . In an even bigger twist of irony S. Pellegrino is owned by Nestle, purveyor of that other antithesis of cooking - Maggi . As in other years, the list makes for an interesting read as much for who made it as for who did not. Noma in obscure Denmark has been the number one - again. Spain gets three spots in the top ten (even though El Bulli is off the list pending its impending closure) - no other country manages more than one mention. It does less spectacularly in the rest of the list - managing only two more mentions to France's seven and six for both Italy and USA. Italy with Osteria Francescana at f...

Vir Sanghvi feels that sushi is the new trend for the boredwithtikkamasala Indian. I’m quite fond of sushi, but evidence to that trend being broad based is still sparse in Mumbai. To mainstream, sushi must be available at places that don’t require a platinum Amex (or a scamworthy bag of money); this is sadly lacking. In America where sushi is now firmly street, decent nigiri and moderately awful miso soup is embedded into every strip mall and grocery store worth its name; not quite so in Mumbai. Its true that Thai and Mexican passed us by, but sushi is a food of expensive ingredients – the rice, the ultrafresh imported fish – so bring it to the streets isn’t going to be easy. Or so I thought. It turns out that Mumbai has its cheap sushi after all - If not to the street, at least a food court. Atria Mall in Worli proudly sports Taste of Tokyo – a sushi joint that shares space with eminent names such as Kailash Parbat and Swati Snacks . The place everything required of fastfood ja...

Tea is, after water, the most consumed drink in the world . The brown liquid has shaped world history; empires have been built and destroyed on the quest for the leaf and it was not entirely accidental that Boston decided to choose tea for their party in 1773 . Again in America tea (of a new political kind ) is grabbing headlines but as I write this, I’m sipping  the regular morning cup. Of course, with my bong bhodrolok obsessions things aren’t that regular about my morning cup. This one is a white tip smoky earl grey from Chado Tea at Phoenix Mills, at roughly Rs 5,000 per kilo (I bought a mere hundred grams). Its a tea that brings together China, India and Imperial England into a single cup. Early Grey tea is a favourite of mine (and one of the few things that come reliably well from tea bags) but smoky earl grey was a first – the edginess of earl grey attached to a smoky aroma more characteristic of lapsang souchong . I’ve blogged quite a few times about tea earlier –...

A couple of years ago, I blogged about finding in dense heart of Versova an unusual cabbage pakora. Mumbai doesn’t make pakodas out of cabbage; I hadn’t really seen them before, and didn’t see them since - till today. Wandering the equally narrow and dense lanes of Worli village, the fisherman’s colony that leads up to Worli fort, I came across not one, not two but three places selling cabbage pakoras. This time they were accompanied by deep crimson schezwan sauce – “homemade, ours is the best” the ladies manning the cart told me (it was a salty, garlicky and recognizably non-chinese).  Its always interesting to stumble upon these small local food phenomena. Two different fishing communities manage to dodge the rest of Mumbai and adopt bright red cabbage pakoras; what are the odds ?