The Well-Fed Bong

Ducking out of another hotel dinner, I put my fate in the hands of taxi driver Ainaz, who promptly took me to Zam Zam in nearby Thiruvanthapuram. A short drive from the hotel, Thiruvananthapuram (I hope I don’t to write that again – even copy-paste is tough) turned out to be (disappointingly for a capital city of a state) a small and somewhat rundown town; possibly a reflection of Kerala’s communist dysfunction. Civic infrastructure – roads, sidewalks, garbage, traffic lights – were mostly non-existent, giving the town a feel of the uncomplimentary kind of backwater. We wound through the city’s main road (named, with the usual inevitability, after MG), past mostly uncrowded shops and jewellers, past Tripadvisor #1 Azad Restaurant to the end of the road – Zam Zam.   Now the one thing to be said for the place is that unlike the rest of the road, Zam Zam (and its three neighbours) were buzzing with cars and people. I nearly came back out since there was no place to sit, but the ...

I’m at an exotic destination with excellent local food again, and Indian food is again being avoided . This time, however, I’m not doing the avoiding by choice. Sitting in beautiful Kovalam, surrounded by sea and seafood, spices and foodloving nairs I’m stuck consuming thai salad, green curry and exotic vegetables for lunch. Even the desserts diligently dodge any mention of payasam; sticking valiantly to strudels, ice creams and “tropical fruits”. Yesterday’s lunch was marginally better. Some of the dishes had suitably unpronounceable mallu names (even if the majority of the Indian section doled out punjabi and rajasthani). In particular a firecracker chilli pickle and some very nice mango pachadi made my meal. No such luck today – forget local authenticity, even the thai food was not remotely authentic. Neither avial or appam has yet been encountered.

It was not the kind of branding I expected to see in a messy, muddy, back-of-beyond suburb of Pune. A bright purple could have been expected, wadewale is not that uncommon but a clean, well-designed sign with a small cartoon face? A self-confident sign that would be more in place in an ad agency pitch than a vada pao joint – its not even part of a chain! Yevale Wadevale – the sign-art was sufficiently attractive to get me to stop and take a second look. And boy, am I glad I did. I was hungry, winding through those narrow rollercoaster Katraj Kondhwa road on my way back to Mumbai. An accidental traffic knot made me stop right in front of the bright pink sign; since I’d already managed to park I decided this was the vada pao shop for me. I sauntered in, and in my best James Bond voice asked for a vada and (when in Pune and all that) a Punehri Misal . View Larger Map The vada pao landed up immediately – steaming hot, blazingly spicy, sided by garlic chutney fried chillies. No...

I gathered much material for Thai food; this might yet evolve into a Rambo-quality series. This is my second instalment about eating Thai off the streets, sitting down in air-conditioned comfort ordering food off a menu. Waiting for food to come to you rather than walking up to it. Haute of a sort. Thailand is, in a sense, like India – most of the best renditions of classic cuisine is found in the hole-in-walls rather than at fancy places. Like most Indian food, prices are usually attached to ambience rather than to food quality. This can make for a minefield of disappointment for the dedicated foodie – how do you decide visually what is worth visiting? Worse in a country where local reviews, blogs and even menu descriptions are written in gobbledygook. Haute can end up with pretty waiters instead of pretty good food.   The (English) guidebooks’ choice for high thai seemed to be Bo.Lan . From decidedly hippie Lonely Planet to the decidedly snootier Travel+Leisure ...

A quick trip to our great capital left me without enough time to go to Chandi Chowk, so we headed to Bengali Market – a place I last visited a decade ago, and still remembered fondly - for our golgappa fix. The two giants – Nathu Sweets and Bengali Sweet House - still dominate Bengali Market with their huge range of sweets and chaat (not to mention Chinese). We headed to Bengali Sweet House first – partly because the car put us down in front of it, partly because unlike the air-conditioned Nathu this place was still willing to hand us golgappas one at a time, traditional style. The gol gappas water was much tangier and tastier than the Mumbai green bilge (though this was green too) but repeated entreaties to make the filling spicier did not yield much result. As verdicts go, “better than Mumbai” is all I’m willing to venture.   We then crossed the street into AC comfort to try and see if Nathu was still any good. The kesar lassi was great, but neither the kachori nor the ...