The Well-Fed Bong

I spent most of my time on the streets of Thailand, but I did venture into a few restaurants. Lets start with Hua Hin. Lonely Planet told me the place to go for seafood and atmosphere was Chao Lay (ranked #2 on the list of things to do in Hua Hin though there are some differing opinions ) but I was eventually taken there for a rather offbeat reason – MakeMyTrip (who was making our trip) organised the usual desi lunch at that place. Apparently one of their chefs – Portuguese parentage from Macau and has lived in Nepal -  knew Indian (read Punjabi) food. I met him on the way out of the restaurant, trying to do my usual duck and hide lunch run when faced with Indian food; he convinced me that if I stayed he would make me real Thai from the restaurant’s usual menu. Thus my rendezvous with green lip mussels and the first tom yam of the trip. The main reason for the popularity of Chao Lay is its location; its a wharfside restaurant with unending views of the sea. Few places in the ...

Serpis is shut for good. Most people, even many long term Bandra residents, will have no idea what that meant. Even google in all its wisdom knows where it is but has nothing to say about what it is. A bare handful of links mention it at all, and no reviews or gushing blogs serve up its secrets. This alone, in todays hyperinformation world, would have guaranteed Serpis the status of a “find” but alas – no more. One fine day, discreet as ever, Serpis put a small notice on its door saying it was closed till further notice. It sounded more like a monsoon break than a retirement, but confirmation has come through the grapevine; there will be no further notice. Serpis was a cold storage. That does not mean so much in Bandra, but Serpis was a special kind of cold storage. He was, you see, a master of the daily meat. On different days of the week he produced different meats – Wednesdays for roast beef, Saturdays for barbecue chicken on his large outdoor grill, other days for other things ...

Drinks inside domestic flights went the way of dinosaurs days before my first flight, and for a very long time the only place to drink even before boarding a flight was at Bangalore Airport. The sobriety situation stayed firmly in place for decades; your only options for flying drunk was to tank up before entering the airport or joining the ever-expanding ranks of desi international travellers. Private airports changed all that; now the average alcoholic has all kinds of options even when his (or her) ticket is firmly printed with names like Delhi or Jhumritalayia. Swank bars have opened up in checkin areas, but even more important in the waiting areas as well. I discovered Foodie Bar at Mumbai domestic about nine months ago, but it is in the Air India terminal and not even my entreaties about ready availability of liquor persuaded friends and family to buy AI tickets. Some months ago, the “other” domestic terminal also gained a version of Foodie Bar. Called 24x7 (though there was m...

When I first moved into Mumbai in the mid nineties, Gujarati Thali was a big thing. At a time when expense accounts were still some years away, the sheer promise of unlimited food (even if vegetarian), attentive waiters and wholesomely pretty gujju girls (even if vegetarian) all sounded like the greatest option ever. That most of them were tucked into bylanes made them (in the era before map-laden smartphones) only added to the adventure. Don’t get me wrong though, I also do love the food. This whole prologue is leading up to my visit to Panchvati Gaurav today, hidden inside a mall in Thane. The somewhat odd name means the pride of five banyans and derives from an eponymous religious place near Nasik ; this is where the chain originates too. It was one of the star thali places in those days, suitably hidden in Marine Lines behind two thousand shows of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. In those days it used to rank somewhere between Status and the very hard to find Thakkar . The original loca...

Today I went in search of misal . Misal is as soundly maharashtrian as the pandu, the vada pao, the dabbawallah or the endearing habit of naming everything after Shivaji. No self-respecting station or streetcorner in Mumbai can afford to maintain its status in society without one. I suspect that while pao bhaji is sold to the tourists, Mumbai survives on misal. Even our canteen - which can barely fry an onion - will occasionally serve halfway decent misal (and surprising for so simple a dish, a misal is rather easy to screw up). The name just says “mixed” but such simplicity hides endless variations on the basic aria. The two mixers in the mix are simple – a spicy, watery pea-centric dal called usal and dried fried snacks called farsaan or chiwda. Optionals such as diced onions, pao, dahi, sprouts, aloo are, well, strictly optional. The droolworthiness is in the details – sprouts or spicy potatoes or poha, all kinds of stuff that can be hidden in there. The defining characteristic...

This is a multi-post, on three meals. First, there was Caravan Serai , where I was treating my nephew to kababs. We ordered three; the chicken kalimirch came out first and was wonderful – raising expectations to fever pitch. The mutton galauti that followed tumbled us into the depths of the disappointing (for a while we thought they may have served us veg galouti by mistake) and the chicken kasturi that brought up the tail promised cheese and other exotic flavours but ended up innocuous and barely passable. Across the road was the newest addition to the gourmet chocolate craze that seems to be catching up in Bandra. An Australian chain that built its brand around Spain’s answer to the donut, its a large slick operation with eight kinds of truffles, multiple shake&stir options, chocolate fondues, burgers, sandwiches, chocolate drinks and of course, churros. The chocolates were rather colourful, looked expensive and were quite good. They weren’t Bandra’s best (the Taj Lands ...

It took me a while to start my first day at Chiang Mai. Its a slow city; even the morning newspaper arrives only at 11am. By the time I was out of the door the sun was already showing off a little, and the day's bustle past its morning peak. Beyond the tuk tuk stand outside the hotel was a small cluster of restaurants, one of which caught my attention. It advertised mutton biriyani. The restaurant, it turned out, offered local Muslim food (properly certified by the local mullahs, the sign also said). I'd been told by Lonely Planet that Muslims here were the legacy of Chiang Mai's bygone glory days, when caravans from Yunnan brought goods, foods and religions. Quite different from the pork-centric menus of the rest of the populace, the stall offered chicken, mutton, beef and shrimp biriyani. However, rice weighed too heavily on my unexercised conscience, so I ordered oxtail soup instead. This was revealed to be a steaming bowl of clear, bracingly spicy broth full of large...

Day Two, I went jogging. It sounds horribly exotic to go jogging in Hua Hin specially when I duck it so frequently at home, but I did lace up and start running bright and early. Only to find food within minutes. A hundred yards out of the hotel gates a most odd barbecue cart pulled up next to me; it was attached to a scooter and the man was driving it around like a perfectly normal scooter - fire, meats, grill and all. I was to learn later that this was not unusual in Thailand, but it certainly provided a quirky start to my day. Barbecue in hand from this mobile pork heaven, ornate temple in the background, I continued my jog now accompanied by a very hopeful street dog (he eventually did get half my barbecue). Another kilometre of uneventful jogging later, I found myself at a canal lined on either side with kaccha roads that the recent rains had turned to mud. The crossing - a small road bridge - yielded another postcard moment. Against the backdrop of the canal was a hugely ...

I'm not being anti-national, just trying to avoid makemytrip feed me desikhana in Thailand. So far, I've managed multiple exotic fruits, barbecued pork, curried oysters, something resembling a jackfruit idli, a couple of nut variants and a steamed rice-coconut pudding. Our saviour was a rest stop on the long journey from Bangkok to Hua Hin in the south. A handful of stalls sold us these exotic fruits (names still unknown) and some very colourful steamed snacks in leaf cups.