The Well-Fed Bong

Grilling raw meat for a few minutes – most of the world would barely consider cooking; America has, however, managed to persuade everyone that it is, in fact, very haute as cuisine goes. The great American steak is something I am very fond of. When I first moved to New York, Atkins was all the rage and steak was practically health food. In the years that followed Atkins (real and diet both) rested in peace and cholesterol worries became a religion; New York’s steakhouses, however, did not seem to bother too much – the ancient ones still held their own while fancy new ones cropped up with great regularity to take turns at stretching the good old expense account. Steak remains America’s luxury dining of choice, and New York has some of the best. The most legendary steakhouse in the city is without a doubt Peter Luger . The place celebrates its 125th year by proudly proclaiming to have been #1 for the last 24 years (why it took a hundred years is a mystery). I had heard and read ple...

A few Sundays ago, a rather ancient plane served me decent satay and plunked me into a country where three civilizations have been trying to teach the others to cook for generations. And they usually get it right; Malaysia is a great place for foodies, and I had hardly had my fill on the plane. The aircraft finally diisgorged us bang on the evening of rhe IPL final and with Kuala Lumpur strangely disinterested in cricket, even with all that fixing, we were stuck hotel room watching it on Youtube. Luckily the room service menu had Malay food; a very nice nasi lemak duly landed up on a pretty little tray, but the other item was a nicer surprise. mee mamak - official name mee goreng mamak-style – the Mamaks, it seems were Tamil Muslims who came to Malaysia centuries so this was basically Indian Chinese Malay-ishtyle. Day Two, however, started badly. Having neglected to reset my watch for time zones, I woke up for early lunch instead of late breakfast. A short walk down the promi...

Its always a good idea to cultivate marriageable Mallu friends, or at least friends willing to be married to Mallus. The last time this yielded dividends was at Anjali’s wedding – Chennai, but a wonderful, payasam-loaded affair – and it took half a decade to find another candidate. And so I landed in Thrissur, home to temple, elephants, tons of big fat jewelers and the ridiculously named Lulu Garden Hotel (35 rooms and a helipad) working off my work obligations before jumping into the revelry. I checked in late, only a dull ‘working’ lunch in my belly, but with sleep deprivation and little appetite for adventure decided to eat in (hotel kitchens are usually dull, I thought, but rarely fatal). Two hours later, I was weeping and sniffling like a baby. The food was, much to my surprise, excellent. It was also blazingly, killingly, blazingly (have I already said that?) spicy - even the raita given to cool things off had pieces of chilly. The mutton olathiyathu sang with flavour, the p...

One hardly ever comes across anything worth talking about that has not already been talked about. Mumbai's bloggers are quite an active lot, usually out-writing me with ease. It was with some satisfaction, therefore, that I discovered hidden gold in the heart of Girgaum. Of course, being entirely undiscovered was too much to ask. A MumbaiBoss column by Roshni Bajaj Singhvi first made me aware of Golden, but what really intrigued me was that no one else seemed to have even so much as mentioned it anywhere else. Stalwarts like Zomato and Burrp were silent, and every other mention on the great big cloud were rehashings of the same aforementioned column. All other search results spent their time insisting that Sharma Bhelpuri or some such other was better. This Golden, it seemed, was hidden even from Google. Back on my bicycle last week, I headed straight to Girgaum. The directions in the article were a bit sketchy so a bit of asking around led me to Sicka Nagar (yes, that is in...