The Well-Fed Bong

I'm definitely becoming popular. I stand before you now as the vehicle of a very creative promotional attempt – one of my posts has an obvious, if creatively targeted, spam. Its made to look like a genuine comment by a person in response to my blog on Chennai biriyanis – but it's obviously fake. It gushes about basmati and clean cooking oils and fantastic packaging in a way that can only be an advertorial inspired by commercial interests. And, apparently this commentator – a person named a distinctly feminine-sounding Lavanya - has a wife… What I cannot make out is, was this posted by a robot or manually? Manual, I'm very flattered; robot, not so much – I may even be a little creeped out. Take a look here (comment #2) and decide for yourself.

Today, I woke up lazy and made myself some Maggi, and it brought back memories. Like many of my generation, Maggi used to be vital to sustenance. In school, it was an after-school snack, in college one of the only edible things on the canteen menu. We we first started working, Maggi was still a key factor in keeping us alive. It was years before we realized there were other ways to do things. Instant noodles, however, is a fascinating food. Maggi is nearly synonymous with instant noodles in India, but the Swiss-German company did not invent it. It started life as a luxury good, many times more expensive than regular noodles in 1958 Japan, founder Momofuku Ando's original intention to alleviate post-war food shortages. It was hardly an instant success – Nissin (the company that Ando founded) trundled along for a over a decade till the cup-a-noodle was introduced in 1971, to instant success. It may have taken a while to get there, but get there it has. The World Instant N...

Yesterday, Vicky Ratnani of the very posh Aurus was on TV stuffing karelas . A recent post of mine about karela in Kerala had people doubting my taste in taste but here a five star chef was happily stuffing the very same thing on national television.With imported cheese too! Which got me thinking... Human tastebuds have a syllabus of four (five if you're Chinese - they couldn't fit a billion into just five) but the only one that gets a bad rap is bitter. Medicine is supposed to be the cause of it, but really – when was the last time you had a bitter pill? Think of it. Many of life's greatest pleasures have a bitter edge. Chocolate is bitter. Marmalade is bitter. Tea, coffee is bitter. Beer, Rum, Whisky and every other variant of alcohol is bitter. Even the olives in Bond's martini are bitter. In spite of all that, leaving a bitter taste in one's mouth is considered a bad thing. No wonder the karela is bitter about it.

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.

  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...

Bits and pieces of food experience have been accumulating, not enough to carve a post out of, but enough to cobble together into a potluck. The first was my visit to Chennai, where a last minute google search found me a late late lunch at Ponnusamy , just a short deviation off the straight line between two meetings. In the course of my earlier googles about food in Chennai and the biriyani wars, this name had surfaced a few times; some had even appointed it top rank. Curiosity, hunger and the aforementioned shortness of deviation was thus all very propitious, and in due course I was seated at the somewhat seedy interiors of the Adyar Branch of Ponnusamy Hotels (yes, like nearly every eatery in Chennai, this is also a chain). Ponnusamy promises "South Indian and Chettinad" food and is also supposed to be renowned for it's biriyani (so google claimed). Hungry as a dog, I promptly rolled off an order for Chettinad staples rabbit fry, pepper chicken and mutton biriyani. ...

A few days ago, while wading through a reliably satisfying meal at one of the many Mainland Chinas of Mumbai, I was asked The Question again. No doubt you have asked this many times yourselves, in your head or to your friends or the occasional visitor from the real mainland of China - how different is Chinese food in India from real Chinese food? The short, maggi-sauce answer is easy (its different) but the longer answer - like all longer answers to Great Questions - is complicated. The first twist is in defining what one means by "Chinese" food. China, after all, is a really huge number of people and many different food cultures - and contrary to popular opinion they don’t all eat fried rice with kung pao chicken. In fact, food from one province can verge on the inedible for another, much like my soundly Bengali grandmother's opinion of a dosa. Indian Chinese food is heavily influenced by the first wave of Chinese immigrants who came to India from Canton province, and...

Food blogs are gaining some prominence. In the last few days, two people have posted on my blog, one offering to send me Danone yoghurt to taste and write about, and another a missive from Sweden on food products planning to enter the Indian market. Which brings me to an interesting thought - Busybee and Vir Sanghvi notwithstanding, India does not have much of a culture of mainstream food journalism. No major newspaper has a food editor or even a dedicated food section. Food magazines are at best Femina supplements, while A Michelin-like guide is as distant a dream as many of the cars that sport those tires. In contrast, The New York Times gives its (daily) food section prominence equal to the sports pages, while Europe worships its many food guides (chefs have committed suicide for failing to get the desired stars). The food press worldwide is massive - innumerable magazines with names like Gourmet or Restaurant (we're not even talking wine mags) sell lakhs of issues; they'...

I wrote earlier about food photography, but I was quite unprepared for Hong Kong. The night markets and the profusion of eateries there turned out to be a parade of food photos like no other.   Chinese eateries are known for their long menus but plastering every square inch of the walls with food shots gives these places an unusual atmosphere; as if you’re part of some massive photo exhibit. This comprehensive plastering seems to serve both purposes – point-n-shoot ordering and wallpapering, and of course if you’re not Chinese it gives you the barest hint of what you might expect. The photographs are quite good (if all in a vary straightforward, angled topshot style). The plates are artfully arranged and properly lighted, there are the usual colourful touches of lettuce or artful sauce splashes, and its all printed in large, sharp colour on photo-quality flex or paper. The interesting part is - I can’t imagine cheap eateries actually investing generous amounts on photographers and...

My blog now has a new look, which makes me seem more productive, given that I'm down to one post per quarter...

Recently, an article in the New York Times made the somewhat surprising claim that “goat is the most widely consumed meat in the world”. Now I’m the first one to go drooling after some top-class mutton, but given how difficult it is to get the goat on menus around the world, this was a somewhat surprising statistic. I turned to trusty a google search for some answers, but except for the odd dissenting voice on a forum everyone seemed to agree that it was, indeed, the case. I was intrigued but not quite convinced. My diffidence did not prevent me from stating the statistic with great authority to a few more people, but I was met with similar reactions – possible, but a little counter to experience. China is said to account for 70% of the production and consumption of mutton, yet in Chinese restaurants everywhere (even the ones I’d seen in China) had far more chicken, pork and beef than mutton. However, when disagreeing with the New York Times, one had better be sure. Hence in the...

A McDonald has finally opened below my office, and it set me thinking about how nothing quite defines the American food experience as much as a hamburger. Indeed, some say that's the only thing American about food.  I grew up thinking burgers to be a snack, but Americans seem to chomp it down for breakfast, lunch, dinner - sometimes all of the above and a few in between. Pizza, taco, fried chicken are all world-dominating American inventions but in sheer sales and in cultural significance all pale in front of the Hamburger. They've have seeped into every inch of American life. Fine dining to backyard barbecues, birthday party to funeral, sports game to board meeting, there is little of culinary significance in America that does not have a burger connection.The key is probably simplicity and versatility and (usually) its cheap, quick, satisfying and portable. The basic burger has exactly two core ingredients - a chopped patty (usually beef, but even potato has been known to w...

Ok, I changed the look of the blog. Hopefully its lighter on the eye and easier to read.

I've finally discovered nearly the perfect mapping tool for my blogs. Map Channels lets me make these cool interactive maps using Google Maps that I can then embed into my blog. Really cool. I've started adding maps retrospectively - so far these posts have been mapchanneled. Sausages and Smoke Dining with Saint Francis The only downside seems to be that the javascript maps do not get imported into Facebook notes very smoothly. A bit of a pity, that...

Ethnic is always an interesting challenge. Dictionaries blithely define 'ethnic' as belonging to a shared cultural, linguistic or racial identity - which unfortunately means that the world is full of 'ethnic' restaurants. Nearly every restaurant in New York or Tokyo or London is, by that definition, ethinc - they just belong to the ethnic majority rather than some exotic minority. Italian, Sushi, New American, French...et al. Here again, India saves the day. In a world full of ethnic restaurants, India is overloaded with that unique label - multicuisine. South Indian thali with paneer butter masala, chicken tandoori with chowmein, Russian salad with schezwan soup, its all here, only in India. Armed with the information that Indians when eating out order (that uniquely Indian version of) Chinese food more often than any other kind, eateries in India went about arming their menus with lots of words starting with chow. Then, as tandoori chicken and paneer butter masala s...

When I started this blog some years ago, one of the most frustrating things about blogger was the absence of tagging. They've finally caught up with it, and I too have finally caught up. I just finished tagging all my posts.

You can now subscribe to the blog. I've been told it helps the poor of the world but that may not be entirely true. There's a text box and button on the sidebar that makes the magic possible, though I warn you it will automatically throw you into the arms of an Yahoo group (or should I say...group). At the moment it's all the way at the bottom of the sidebar but may relocate without warning or unnatural squeaking sounds.

I have surrendered to crass commercialism. There are now advertisments in my blog. Luckily they seem to be highly intrusive and real money spinners. I promise to treat all readers to dinners with the accumulated wealth, so click away. And dream on...

The magic hour of dinner looms. I sit in all nicely tead up (early grey, if you must know) at my favorite cybercafe searching for where to eat. This cybercafe has some claim to a food blog too; Golden Gate Perk sits hidden in a corner of Bush and Kearny, serving free wireless and some great great tea. I think I'll go mexican. This is california, after all...