The Well-Fed Bong

Phoenix Market City is possibly Mumbai's largest mall by size. Stuck in the boring side of Kurla (something I'm sure it intends to change), it isn't exactly easy to get to - and by the looks of it not that many are getting there ("sparsely attended" comes to mind). It does, however, one of the route options on my long commute back from Thane, so I decided to head inside for dinner yesterday. My destination was Cafe Pico . Started by the folks from the rather nice cafe at Le Mill , the place promises food " born of a million little journeys " around the world. The menu lives up to the promise, mixing French, Italian and Mediterranean with the odd touch of the Caribbean, one or two Africans and even the odd foray into the east. Its peppered with dishes you normally do not see in India; strangolapretti, pissaladiere, goujon, duxelle, tagliata all appear at various points and sound nice, juicy names worth exploring, especially if the execution is good. Pee...

Viator rates the dosa one of the ten things to try before you die . I have my own periodic dosa cravings, but this isn't entirely simple in Mumbai. There's no dearth of options - udipis abound on every street corner peddling dosas and idli any hour of the day that Dhoble allows - but most are not very good. One has to battle a lot of sugared sambar and funny batters before one stumbles upon one that satisfies my Bangalore-honed tastebuds. Rescue, however, is at hand. If you're looking for sambar with bite, idli with fluff, dosa that might bring Rajnikant back to Mumbai and coffee that is not nescafe then the best way South is East. Matunga East, that is. Kings Circle is now called BN Maheshwari Udyan but it is still the birthplace of the Mumbai udipi and the only place in Mumbai to get a dosa fix. For decades, two ornate southern style temples in the vicinity have served as the city's anchor for Tamilians, Kannadigas and various other flavours of southies. The udi...

I'm always excited about new Bengali restaurants in Mumbai, and fast expanding Kolkata chain Bhojohori Manna has been on my radar for a while now. Initial negative reviews from a trusted friend had dissuaded me from making the journey to Oshiwara; a visit had thus to wait for me to venture nearby on another excuse. Finally, on rainsoaked noon a few days ago, the eponymous song already having been played on iPod, Sunanda and I stepped into the large, empty restaurant. I'll make the review brief. Bhojohori Manna , if it can continue without any more dental troubles has overtaken Bijoli Grill at the top of my Bengali restaurant choices in Mumbai. With the exception of a somewhat disappointing posto'r bora and a disastrous rajbhog , the food was wonderful. Ethereal luchis , stunning cholar dal , a beautiful daab-chingri , lip-smacking shukto , sublime nolen-gur ice cream - there was much to like on the menu. Places like Oh Calcutta are scared of too much authenticity an...

I thought I'd covered all surprises in Mumbai, but distant Dahisar had more in store than I thought. After finishing off a particularly satisfying keema ghotala at Western Dhaba (next to the more famous but currently shuttered Dara) my eye fell on what looked like a howler of a misprint on the ice cream page - a section called "veg" listing options such as green chilly, coriander and garlic. Just before putting the photo on the funny pages, I decided to point this out to the waiter and discovered the joke was on me. They did indeed have green chilly ice cream available. Yes it was actual ice cream. Yes, cold. Yes, chillies. Yes he would get it. And so it came, a plainjane vanilla ice cream studded with small bits of green chilly - not very spicy, just a mild, pleasing bite amid the aroma of chilly. One weirdo down, I asked for the coriander hoping to get some more exotica ingested (only for you readers of my blog, I promise). Unfortunately, the green chilly ...

What would you say to a shop located on the blind side as you turn from Siddhi Vinayak to the more mundane parts of Prabhadevi? Cycling is a good cure to blindness; that's probably the only reason why I managed to stare at the completely unpronounceable name without killing anyone. Two minutes of stammering later I'm ready to go back to modaks – someone should be warned that isn't really the land of spelling bee champions; its the land of their language-mangling parents. Lets just bite the tongue and spit it out; Debailleul . Its not quite clear how you say it, but apparently mashing the two middle 'l's into a 'y' is involved. Mumbai Boss was the first to warn me about a Belgian pastry chef who was bringing an entire patisserie flash frozen from the land of real chocolates. Chef Marc Debailleul is the man behind the magic, a much decorated pastry chef (I wish he had liked his first name more than his second, but no more name jokes). Its a beauti...

I landed in Bangalore starved from the early morning flight and a lack of breakfast, and was greeted straightaway with something I thought was uniquely Bangalore – a branded variant of filter coffee. Hatti Kaapi even did the whole meter coffee ritual, and handed me a perfectly acceptable filter kaapi; only the double steel containers were missing. Of course, Bangalore also invented Cafe Coffee Day; that stared reproachfully at my fickleness from the other side of the parking. Kaapi done, I discovered myself on the loose end after a friend ditched me for lunch. Given that it was going to be my sole lunch in Bangalore in a long while, I needed a touch of special. A bit of research dug up modern Indian at the Pink Poppadom, but it was dinner only. Caperberry and its molecular tapas beckoned, but I figured, do I really expect Ferran Adria to hang about Dickenson Road? I needed something Bangalore and  bit of thought later I narrowed the choice to the biriyani at Nagarjuna Residency...

No one can accuse Cafe Zoe of being easy to locate.  Embedded deep in the heart of Mathuradas Mills, the entrance tucked out of sight behind parked cars and the local omelette-pao place, Zoe tries very hard to be a 'find'. And succeeds.       Push past the large door, and you are suddenly transported into a cool, minimalist world of comfortable spaces and calm furniture. The ceiling soars, the sunlight pours in, colourful sofas invite you to laze about and widely space blondewood tables seem meant for gossip. Bunches of bare bulbs hang from unconcealed cables, the bar is made of old crates, a long bare brick wall adds to a carefully cultivated sense of industrial clutter. Cutlery comes in glass tumblers, water and gazpacho in glass milk bottles, salads in tall glass containers that look just like plastic till you touch them. This could be New York – a bistro in LES one of those cool Brooklyn places that have sprung out of gentrification, men in suits mingled ...

It was with some interest that I read the invitation Rushina had sent me. The text mentioned Dalmore, and I knew only two pieces of trivia about Dalmore. One was its owner - via Whyte and Mackay our very own Vijay Mallya – and second that someone had purchased in Singapore Duty Free a Dalmore worth about rupees one crore – apparently the most expensive regular whisky in the world . To those who want to do the math, its about one lakh rupees a small sip . My hopes of coming anywhere near that bottle were understandably slim, but Dalmore makes other stuff worth drinking too. The twelve, the gran reserva and the fifteen were promised but the invitation promised still more - a food and whisky pairing that combined the talents of Mallya's minions with Jamavar's Chef Surender Mohan. While wine-food pairings are a dime a dozen, this was the first time I was about to try a whisky-food pairing that did not involve a dive bar. Whisky is hardly a stranger to food; the enduring ...

Its always wonderful to find a hidden find, tucked away in hard to reach places but still worth reaching. One such was Indian Accent , a restaurant folded carefully into a nook in a gated community of quiet lanes and expensive bungalows. The Manor Hotel that houses the restaurant is itself a silent, comforting place with kurta-clad staff, cozy lawns  and understated decor. How did I find it? Embarassingly enough, like half of India I read Vir Sanghvi. And BBC's new Good Food Magazine . And the Times Food Award. I and fellow culinary explorer Atul headed into the recesses of Friends Colony; it took us a few wrong turns before we were settled into the dying minutes of lunch service. Napkins on lap, cellphones on tablecloth, we sat down to the serious business of studying the menu. Too late for the tasting menu, a la carte it was going to be. I liked the name, it seemed to imply that the food was like your global desi – hugo boss suits and frequent flier miles, but with a desi ta...