Punch Drunk

 

(This column first appeared in the 19th December 2021 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/khimad-that-spicy-winter-punch-that-heralds-christmas-for-mumbais-east-indian-community/article37984765.ece)

May’s Missing Maushis

Summer in Mumbai just isn’t the same without the original ‘Spice Girls’—aka. groups of itinerant spice grinding ladies—whose rhythmic pounding of the many spices that go into the famous East Indian bottle masala blend are set to the tune of traditional work songs called ovis. 

By Raul Dias

Ever since I can remember, synesthesia has played a particularly important role in my life. Numbers for me have genders. Days of the week have a definite hierarchy, with Sundays leading the pack. And all my months are neatly divvied up to form a rainbow of colours.
May’s colour has always been somewhere on the spectrum between a buttery yellow and an earthy burnt Sienna. No big surprise there. Think bright summer suns, freshly baked lemon chiffon cakes and yes, that indescribable hue of a ripe Alphonso mango.
But there are two more shades in the family that truly define the month and by default, summer for me. The almost-neon tangerine shade of freshly pounded East Indian bottle masala that is always stored in amber coloured beer bottles for a longer shelf-life. Thus, the name—bottle masala.

Spicy Talk
While I am not an East Indian by birth, I have always been a big fan of their culture and most pertinently, their cuisine. Having lived most of my life, here in Dadar West, Mumbai, surrounded by a close-knit, strongly matriarchal community of East Indian families led by genial aunties who made it their mission to indulge the budding foodie in me with their yummy curries and succulent roasts. Almost all jazzed up with the ubiquitous East Indian bottle masala. From the coconut milk enhanced mutton lonvas to a spicy chicken moile, the bottle masala reigns omnipotent.
Just like the 36-ingredient Moroccan ras-el-hanout spice blend or the Ethiopian berbere mix, East Indian bottle masala is made up of a bewildering number and variety of spices from the more obvious Kashmiri chillies to the ‘Google-it-now’ nagkesar. The latter—I just learnt for the purposes of this piece—is also called Indian rose chestnut or cobra saffron, by the way!
Added to this, the complex dry spice blend has as many iterations with varying measurements and ratios of spices. I would not be exaggerating if I said that every East Indian family uses a different recipe for bottle masala—some use 20 spices, some 30, while the most elaborate of the lot use up to 40. But try asking any self-respecting East Indian cook to part with their recipe and they will sooner part with their lives. Such is the almost militant level of secrecy that shrouds the hallowed recipe for the masala.
In fact, I remember an old neighbourhood aunty once telling me that East Indian mothers never teach their daughters how to make their bottle masala for the fear of them taking their prized recipe out of the family after getting married. They have no such compunctions, I was informed, for incoming daughters-in-law. I rest my case.

Thump and Grind
This also leads me to a vital link, not just to the whole bottle masala supply chain, but also to my very synesthetically-heightened month of May—the masalawaali maushis. It is the rhythmic thumping sound that these singing, itinerant spice grinding ladies make while pounding the aromatic, roasted spices for the bottle masala that I associate with summer as well. But not this year. Thanks to the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown, my backyard will not be infiltrated by the pungent fumes and lilting melodies originating from my neighbour’s garden. The maushis will not be coming.
Mainly from the local Maharashtrian Agri community, these women are generally always much in demand and need to be booked months in advance. Always armed with their wooden pounding vessel called an ukli and its cohort the mussal which is a mace-like stick with a metal base to hit the ingredients. These groups of ladies travel from house to house from early March to the end of May to grind the family’s annual supply of bottle masala according to each family’s specifications. Making sure to finish up their important task before the monsoon season sets in.
Interestingly, though they may be experts at first sifting, then roasting and finally pounding the spices, they will never fully know the final recipe for the masala. Not only will the house matriarch weigh each ingredient separately and hand it over to the maushis for pounding, but as per tradition, she will also withhold one vital ingredient that she will pound herself that will later be added to the final mix.
Undoubtedly, one of the most enduring and endearing traditions of the maushis is the singing of ovis (which literally means ‘strung together’) while they pound the spices. More specifically, they sing jatyavarchi ovi that are specialised Marathi language grinding songs that are used as poetic metre for rhythmic prose.
One such ovi by Bahinabai who was an unlettered 19th century peasant poet from the Khandesh region of Maharashtra comes to mind and seems a perfect way to sum it all up in times like these. It says:
Get up at midnight, neatly set out the grain
begin working the grinding stone
be patient, don’t talk back, hold your tongue
let the memories of your old life comfort you!
   
SUNDAY RECIPE
Bottle Masala 
(Recipe courtesy Ann Dias)

INGREDIENTS:
1 kg dried red Kashmiri chilies
250 gm dried red Madras chilies
25 gm whole wheat grain
80 gm powdered turmeric
5 gm dagdaphool also called stone flower
200 gm cumin seeds
15 gm fenugreek seeds
500 gm coriander seeds
150 gm mustard seeds
250 gm poppy seeds
50 gm peppercorns
15 gm cloves
250 gm white sesame seeds
15 gm caraway seeds
14-15 green cardamoms
7-8 black cardamoms
10 gm cinnamon stick
10 gm asofoetida
25 gm bay leaves
1 nutmeg
5 gm tirphal also called Japanese pepper
5 gm star anise
5 gm nagkesar also called Indian rose chestnut
15 gm fennel seed
5 gm mace
50 gm whole Bengal gram
5 gm allspice

METHOD:
1. Precisely measure and dry out all the ingredients under hot sun for two days, making sure no moisture remains in them.
2. Over low heat, dry roast the Kashmiri chillies and the Madras chillies for 8-10 mins in a wide bottom pan making sure to not burn them.
3. Similarly roast the rest of ingredients for 7-8 mins on low heat or until they are aromatic.
4. Dry grind the roasted ingredients in several batches until fine, either in a large ukli or in a spice blender. You could also take the mix to a local mill to get it pounded.
5. To stick with tradition, tightly pack the bottle masala into amber- or green-tinted, sterilised beer bottles, sealing the top off with butter paper and hot wax. Otherwise, one can also store it in an airtight container or any other lidded glass container.
(This makes for an approximately 2.5 kg yield of bottle masala, so adjust according to desired quantity)


(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 17th May 2020 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 8 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/mays-missing-maushis-a-mumbai-summer-without-the-itinerant-east-indian-masala-makers/article31589988.ece)

Some Like it Hot…Me, Cold!

Sometimes all it takes is a comforting bowl of porridge to help kickstart one’s journey down memory lane   

By Raul Dias

It was a particularly ferocious winter morning exactly 54 years ago, when the nuns of St. Angela Sophia boarding school, Jaipur had finally reached their wits end. The object of their collective exasperation—a preternaturally rebellious 12-year-old girl—was at it again. This time it was her vehement refusal to touch her morning breakfast bowl of salted oatmeal porridge that had landed her in trouble. Again.
Muttering under her breath that it smelled like old socks, the girl was ‘banished’ to the kindergarten section of the school. Her punishment; to hold the bowl of porridge high above her head with both hands while kneeling down in front of a phalanx of giggling toddlers. She was to continue doing so till she had made up her mind to give the porridge a go. She never did. And she hasn’t to this very day. That defiant little terror was my mother.

Goldilocks, anyone?
Despite the rather Dickensian tales of Mum’s boarding school days and more pertinently, her utter revulsion towards porridge of any kind, I simply love the gooey, unctuous stuff. And I have our dear old Mangalorean cook Mary to thank for that.
Having formerly been cooking for an expatriate British family for years before she came into our family’s employ, Mary had amassed an astounding cache of porridge recipes—both Indian and International—that were by now a firm fixture on our quotidien breakfast menu.
One of her greatest hits was the delicious-tasting Goan vonn that’s very similar to the divine Tamil sakkarai pongal. Also known as soji in South Goa, this rather complex porridge is made with a host of ingredients, chief of which is chana dal (split Bengal gram), bits of which are cleverly left whole in the preparation for texture. The porridge is further enhanced by the addition of thick coconut milk and palm jaggery. The latter lending to the dish an earthy, warm flavour that almost tastes like what petrichor would, perhaps. 
Now, long before the story of fussy Goldilocks and her trio of porridge-loving bears became a favourite of ours, my older sister and I played out our own version almost daily. Some days we were particularly partial towards Mary’s iteration of a simple milk-enriched, warm rava porridge, where toothsome grains of semolina competed with slivers of toasted almonds.
On others, which were more often than not, we relished the gloopy consistency of her steel-cut oatmeal porridge sliding down our throats. One that she’d top up with cold milk and a splodge of treacle to sweeten the deal. It would be decades later, on a work trip to Belfast, when I would discover the Irish way of truly ‘enjoying’ a bowl of oatmeal porridge…with a splash of peaty Irish whiskey added to it for a smoky finish!

Savouring the Savoury
However, it is not just the sweetened varieties of porridge that have managed to rouse me out of bed every day over the years. I am equally fond of the savoury porridge. To be more specific, I love the wholesome goodness of porridges like ragi ambali. Though mostly consumed as a thick drink in Karnataka, I like to enjoy the light pink-hued concoction as a porridge. This is achieved by adding a little more than usual amount of sprouted ragi (finger millet) flour to the water-buttermilk slurry to which a bit of salt has been added. But it is the final tempering with curry leaves, mustard seeds and chilli that makes the scrumptious ragi ambali a must-have for me.
On the absolute opposite end of the spice spectrum of savoury porridges is another Goan porridge called pez. Simply put, pez is just another name for a bland gruel made with rice and water and one that is known multifariously as kanjee or kunji in regions south of the Vindhyas. We Goans like to have our pez either with a bit of dried, salted mackerel pickle called parra or served with a side of tora shiro mango water pickle.

The Travelling Bowl
Whenever I find myself travelling to East Asia, I am quite surprised when I’m offered a breakfast porridge of the Chinese iteration of good old kanjee that they call, funnily enough, congee. Only here, one is presented with a virtual smorgasbord of condiments and toppings like fried shallots and garlic, cubes of sweet lap cheong pork sausage, chopped spring onions, salted duck eggs and the ubiquitous soy sauce to enhance the flavour of the simple rice gruel.
It really is testament to the prowess of porridge that we now have several porridge-only cafés and restaurants scattered across the world from places as diverse as Edinburg and Copenhagen severing the breakfast dish in the most interesting and dare-I-say, often contrived combinations. A recent trip to New York City saw me tuck into a bowl of cold oat and almond meal porridge topped with rice milk and a sprinkling of raw Colombian cocoa nibs and bee pollen at the world’s first all-oatmeal café simply called OatMeals.
At London’s 26 Grains porridge café, I tried a warm quinoa porridge accentuated with a tart burst of the antioxidant-rich acai berry purée that I was told was foraged from the Brazilian Amazon forests. Every spoonful of the exotic bowl was like discovering the joys of porridge all over again.
Now, if I could only convince Mum to do so too!
   
SUNDAY RECIPE
Vonn 

INGREDIENTS:
Chana dal ¼ cup
Water 3 cups
Salt ½ tsp
Rice flour ¼ cup
Palm jaggery (chopped into bits) ¾ cup
Coconut milk 1 ½ cup
Cardamom powder 1 tsp
Chopped cashew nuts ¼ cup

METHOD:
1. Pre-soak the chana dal in water for at least two hours before using.
2. Boil the pre-soaked chana dal with the 3 cups of water and salt for around 15 minutes on a medium-high flame till the dal is cooked, but not mushy.
3. Make a thick paste of the rice flour by adding a little water to it.
4. Add the chopped palm jaggery to the chana dal mixture and stir till fully melted and incorporated.
5. Add the coconut milk and bring to a slow boil, making sure that the milk does not split.
6. Lower the flame to its lowest level and add in the rice flour paste, stirring to ensure that no lumps are formed.
7. Once thickened, sprinkle in the cardamom powder and chopped bits of cashew nuts.
8. Serve either warm, room temperature or chilled! 


(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 15th December 2019 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 12 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/some-like-it-hot-some-like-it-with-bee-pollen/article30297570.ece)

Eat, Pray…Repeat

From crashing East Indian food-saturated open houses to the joy of indulging in forbidden fairground classics, childhood memories of wonton gluttony come to the fore on this first day of the annual September Bandra Feast—the crowning glory of the Queen of Mumbai’s suburbs! 

By Raul Dias

As you read this, I’m probably dying. Yes, dying in anticipation for an annual Sunday lunch feast of epic proportions that I’m about to indulge in at the home of our dear friends, the Gonsalves family, as I have been doing so since I was a toddler. Their quaint wooden cottage is nestled in the meandering alleyways of the Chuim Gaonthan. The latter, one of the last old East Indian Villages of its kind in the Queen of Mumbai’s suburbs, Bandra. A rare one that hasn’t fallen prey to unscrupulous ‘land sharks’ waiting to raze it to the ground, only to replace it with ugly high-rise apartment blocks.
Bedecked in a thousand twinkling fairy lights, and festooned with colourful banners and streamers, the entire little village will soon erupt into a free-for-all feeding frenzy. For it is on today’s 8th of September Feast of the Nativity of Mary aka. Bandra Feast, when the gaonthan’s generous denizens open up their doors and hearts to all those desirous of some true-blue East Indian nosh.
Some of the most potent food memories of my growing up years have been fertilised by the treats—some approved and most forbidden—that I’d indulge in while attending the Bandra Feast and its fun-filled spin-off, the Bandra Fair. But more on those a little later. 

The Back Story
The real saga behind the Bandra Feast begins a few hundred meters away from the Chuim Gaonthan at the Basilica of Our Lady of The Mount overlooking the famous, Bollywood star home-infested neighbourhood of Bandstand. Simply known as Mount Mary’s, this grand, Gothic edifice also plays the greatest role in this “noshtalgic narrative”. It is believed that the church was established in the mid-1700s, soon after an idol of the Virgin Mary was found floating in the waters of the Arabian Sea off the Bandra coast.
Interestingly, this was a few years after a fisherman from the local Koli (as Mumbai’s indigenous East Indian community was called then) had prophesised the finding of said idol. Many subsequent iterations of the church later, the basilica as we know it today was built in 1904. It is since then that the Bandra Feast has been actively celebrated come September every year with copious amounts of food as its lynchpin.
Think Christmas celebrations combined with those of Easter, then multiplied tenfold. That’s how important this feast is to the Catholic East Indians of Bandra. One that goes on for seven whole days, beginning on the Sunday following the 8th of September.

Worms and Beedis 
Till I was around 12 or so, I’d never miss an opportunity of going to the Bandra Fair. Mum and Dad would make sure we’d first pay obeisance at the basilica, lighting a candle for whatever we wanted along with making other supplications. Then, we’d descend down the hundred or so stone steps at the eastern side of the church to get to what I believed to be then the best part of the feast—the fair.
The wide stairway would be dotted on either side by vendors selling all sorts of assorted kitschy tat, from fake rubber lizards to soapy bubble dispensers. But my eyes would always be fixed on forbidden sweets like the tapioca flour- and jaggery-based, gnarly, twig-shaped keedio beedios (literally worms and beedis), the sugar-coated peanuts and the luridly coloured slabs of translucent Bombay halwa. Strangely, the only two things that we were ever allowed to indulge in were the pink guava cheese sweets made and sold by a tiny, snow-white haired Goan lady and the jaw-busting sesame chikki from the stall of a well-known store in Lonavala that my father approved of.   

Meat Feast
Sweet binge done, we’d exit the steps and make our way down the assorted fair games- and Ferris wheel-flanked Chapel Road towards the dead end of the fair which was always the September Gardens food court held in the grounds of the Mount Carmel Church. Here, we’d eat a few savoury snacks like beef mince-filled potato chops and mutton pan rolls bought off a gaggle of indulgent old aunties manning their tiny food stalls. Then it would be off chez Gonsalves for the legendary lunch feast made up of dishes that reflect the unique hybrid Portuguese-meets-Marathi, East Indian cuisine. 
Now, the axis around which most savoury East Indian dishes pivot is the all-important bottle masala. Made from an insanely wide range of spices—with cumin, coriander and chili powders headlining—this mainstay is packed tightly into amber-hued beer bottles and hence its rather intriguing name. And it is this masala, that, along with sautéed onions and slit fresh green chilies, makes the East Indian version of the rich Indo-Portuguese pork stew sorpotel different from its Goan counterpart. The sorpotel—along with two other Bandra Feast staples of the coconut milk-based mutton lonvas and chicken khuddi curry—is best mopped up with crispy, hot fugia balls.
Made from a slurry of flour, yeast, coconut milk and eggs (and named after the Marathi word for balloon—fugga) fugias are the de facto East Indian fried bread no celebration is ever complete without. As a child, I’d waltz right into Aunty Edna Gonsalves’s kitchen to see her create the mini balloons by squeezing the stretchy batter in the web of her hand between the thumb and forefinger and plopping the raw fugias into hot oil to fry till golden perfection was achieved.
But the two most important table toppers at any Bandra Feast have got to be my all-time favourite of the stuffed whole roast suckling pig. And a dish that I hated as a child but have now come to love over the years—the supremely spicy duck moile curry. Both once again made using the ubiquitous bottle masala.
And both, just like all the other East Indian goodies, reflecting that generously divine Bandra Feast vibe! 


SUNDAY RECIPE
Mutton Lonvas 

INGREDIENTS:
Mutton (cubed, bone in pieces) 500 gms
White pumpkin (peeled and cut into cubes) 500 gms
Garlic (crushed) 8 flakes
Coconut milk 150 ml
Bottle masala 2 tbsp
Tamarind pulp 2 tbsp
Ghee 2 tbsp
Salt ½ tsp
Water 2 cups

METHOD:
1. Par boil the mutton with water and salt and set aside.
2. In a medium sized saucepan heat the ghee on a medium flame and fry the crushed garlic, making sure to not brown it too much.
3. Add the bottle masala to the garlic and fry for a few minutes till fragrant.
4. Add the cubed pumpkin and mutton along with its residual stock and cook for another five to seven minutes, still on medium flame.
5. When the pumpkin is cooked, add the coconut milk and the tamarind pulp. Adjust the salt (if needed) and simmer for a few minutes.
6. Serve hot with fugias or bread rolls.
The Mumbai-based writer and restaurant reviewer is passionate about food, travel and luxury, not necessarily in that order.

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the 8th September 2019 issue of The Hindu newspaper's Sunday Magazine section on page 12 https://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/food/eat-pray-repeat/article29360830.ece)

Mumbai’s Parsi-Irani Restaurant Redux!

Cashing in on the newfound nostalgia generated by Mumbai’s legendary old Parsi-Irani Downtown joints are a whole new wave of ‘homage’ restaurants in the city. Each of them hoping to recreate the magic of a bygone era with their inspired cuisine and ambience.  

By Raul Dias

It’s sad, but true. The original South Mumbai Parsi-Irani restaurant is dying a slow death in the city of its birth, with stalwarts like Dhobi Talao’s Bastani & Co. and Colaba’s Paradise already downing shutters and others like Kyani and Sassasian barely limping along. But elsewhere around the city, slick faux-Parsi-Irani-style restaurants have sprung up, paying homage to their predecessors and giving a new twist to Parsi-Irani cuisine mainstays like berry pulao and patra-ni-machchi among others, all in a setting that’s dripping with nostalgia and mock old-world charm. 

SodaBottleOpenerWala
at BKC, Lower Parel, Thane and Powai
At SodaBottleOpenerWala (SBOW) there is no shortage of typically Parsi-Irani tropes that take you back to an era that will soon be relegated to old history tomes. Think bottles of ice-cold raspberry soda and a menu peppered with Parsi-Irani dishes like bun maska and Parsi choi and you’ll get our drift. And so popular is this all-day dining Parsi-Irani café style restaurant that it has multiplied from one outpost in Mumbai to four in the last few years, like some sort of culinary virus! Yes, besides its flagship branch in the glitzy suburban commercial super hub of BKC, SBOW’s Lower Parel, Thane and Powai branches are just as well-visited, dishing out delectable, nostalgia-inducing wonders like the bheeda par eeda, chicken farcha and mutton dhansak that sit pretty atop the red and white checked cloth-draped tables. And while diners perch themselves on those typically Irani café style Bentwood chairs, they can marvel at the toy train that zooms past them on rails suspended from the walls. Speaking of walls, the ‘No smoking/spitting/sleeping in toilet etc. etc.’ sign is hilarity at its genuine best and an ode to the legendary, now defunct Bastani & Co. restaurant, in Dhobi Talao, Mumbai. Cocktails like the zanily named brandy-based brandied bawa and the ripe mango-spiked rustom buntawala take the spicy edge off other dishes like the eggs kejriwal and aloo aunty’s vegetable cutlets.

Bombay Coffee House
at Ballard Estate
A chain of vintage cafés spread across the city, Bombay Coffee House’s Ballard Estate outpost is all about nostalgia, art deco and delicious Parsi fare. The interiors of the restaurant—that’s itself housed in a wing of an art deco-style petrol pump—tell tales of erstwhile Bombay with black and white photo frames and flooring, rustic furniture and interesting elements like vintage telephones, Tintin comics, and a floor to ceiling bookshelf. One can spend their entire day at Bombay Coffee House as the café offers plug-points on each table, ambient music and a comfortable and friendly environment, making it easy for the city’s professionals to work out of. But it makes it to this list thanks to its ultra-authentic Parsi-Irani food on offer like the sublime kid gosht with pav and the crunchy potato straws-topped salli murgh, that more than make up for the fact that no alcohol is served here. But besides the aforementioned a la carte options, patrons can opt for more authentic Parsi favourites like the mutton cutless, the frilly, egg-coated murgh na farcha, dhansak with brown rice and the lagan nu custard as part of a set, 3-course Parsi celebratory feast called a bhonu.

Gymkhana 91
At Lower Parel
This one’s slightly different from the others on this list, in that—as its name suggests—it pays homage to another Parsi mainstay—the gymkhana. Once, ultra-exclusive havens of relaxation and leisure, where affluent Parsis went to socialise and indulge in something they love best—eat, the gymkhana today has morphed into the club, losing a bit of its prized exclusivity. And Gymkhana 91 seeks to bring that sophistication back. Located in the center of Mumbai’s de facto restaurant super hub of Lower Parel, Gymkhana 91 has an ‘Old Boys Club’ look and feel without being stuffy. A loft-like mezzanine area has as its focal point a large, circular, porthole-like stained glass sky light window. Neo-gothic architectural styled walls and windows, colonial designed furniture and lights, green terracotta tiled roof reflect the old-world charm of gymkhanas, while the façade of the building houses an 8-foot clock keeping with the old times when gymkhanas had a clock tower in the vicinity to tell them of the time. Inside, one can sip on a vodka-based rustom nu soda or a bourbon-spiked Mumbai presidency beneath wrought iron chandeliers that hang from a dark-lacquered oak pitched roof and snack on the whimsically named Parsi-style appetisers like rati aunty’s chutney eda pattice or an order of Byculla’s chicken Russian cutlets. For mains, the berry pulao and the old school Parsi akuri hit that nostalgic spot perfectly, as does the clichéd, yet yummy classic caramel custard for afters.

CAFÉ IRANI CHAII
at Mahim
Grabbing headlines a few years ago as the first new Irani restaurant to open in Mumbai in 50 years, Café Irani Chaii (yes, quirky double ‘i’ pat in place!) is an inexpensive and modest little café that sits along a tiny lane in central Mumbai’s Mahim neighbourhood. What makes this place stand out as being radically different from the others in this piece is that it is not paying homage to the restaurants of yore as a modern day faux Irani joint, but it is actually a bona fide Irani café that’s bringing in the nostalgists and even a whole new lot of younger patrons by the drove. And it truly is like a shiny, new portal into a moth-eaten era, with its glass countertop bearing egg trays and glass jars of bull’s eye peppermint candy and Parle-G biscuits. Besides an entire section dedicated to various scrumptious confections like the fresh off the oven buns served with jam, honey and yes, dollops of salted butter, it is the savoury egg dishes that gets us all excited. Given the great love of the Parsi-Irani community for the humble eedu (egg), Café Irani Chaii pulls out all the stops offering everything from the famed spicy scrambled eggs akuri to the unmissable kheema ghotala that is made up of spicy lamb mince with a sunny side egg sitting jauntily atop it. Its single page menu is also peppered with iconic Parsi-Irani dishes like the Irani zereshk polow and mutton paya soup that are best washed down with a Pallonji brand ginger or masala soda, or better still, a piping hot (chipped) mug of its namesake—Irani chai!

A li'l extra...

London’s very own Parsi-Irani homage
The nostalgia for the Mumbai-style Parsi-Irani restaurant has long crossed continents and landed in balmy London with homage restaurants like the many outposts of the Dishoom chain of Parsi-Irani eateries across the city and the celebrated Parsi restaurant Cafe Spice Namaste at Whitechapel by famous British-Parsi celebrity chef Cyrus Todiwala.  

Chai or Choi? That’s the question!
While it may be a distant cousin of the good old Mumbai-style masala chai, Parsi choi is a whole other kettle (pun intended!) of tea. The main difference between regular chai and choi is that the Parsis add mint leaves and lemon grass to their iteration with a whole lot of sugar and milk. In the winter months, or on cold rainy days, it is not uncommon to have black pepper powder added to the tea for some soothing warmth.

(An edited version of this article first appeared in the September 2019 issue of Travel 360, the in-flight magazine of Air Asia India)

Nostalgia—The Berlin Way!

Once a divided city split in two by a mighty wall, Berlin still pays homage to its communist past in myriad ways. Raul Dias takes you to a few iconic places in the German capital that both reference and celebrate this nostalgia equally.

By Raul Dias

Visiting a city like the German capital of Berlin taught me a very important lesson. And that is, that the feelings of nostalgia cannot be compartmentalised into rigid boxes of ‘positive’ or ‘negative’ memories of the past. Even though most of us, including myself, tend to lean towards the former as we reminisce of the good old days. I also learnt that the past cannot be ignored and white washed over!
In the few days spent there, I noticed that some of the most visited attractions in the city are those that reference the city’s divided, pre-1990 past so very well. The Berliners have even coined a very interesting phrase to represent their very own brand of nostalgia. They call it ‘Ostalgie’. Simply put, Ostalgie is nostalgia for aspects of life in Communist East Germany. It is a portmanteau of the German words Ost (east) and Nostalgie (nostalgia) and one that popped up almost everywhere I went.
But, having said that, I found it represented the best in the following attractions and sites around Berlin:

East Side Gallery
I cannot possibly kick start this list without one of the most iconic and obvious remnants of the Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR) taking top billing! Yes, I’m talking about the mighty Berlin Wall. Though most of the wall has be razed there are parts of it scattered across the city that still give you a good look and feel. Once such place is the East Side Gallery that lies between the Berlin Ostbahnhof and the Oberbaumbrücke, located right next to the River Spree. Parts of the Berlin Wall are still there and street artists from all over the world have immortalised their work on the wall, which makes it a 1,316-meter-long piece of art. 118 artists from 21 countries painted on the wall in 1990, and since then it’s one of the most famous monuments in Germany.

Checkpoint Charlie
Another must-visit, given the sheer number of selfie-hungry tourists that swing by it is the infamous Checkpoint Charlie. A former border crossing at Friedrichstrasse, it was managed by the Allies during World War II and in 1961, the U.S and the Soviet tanks had a confrontation here. Checkpoint Charlie also served as a place where many tried to escape from East Berlin. Do make sure to check out the wall museum, as you can explore things which were used to escape underneath or over the wall and read stories of the refugees. The museum does serve to keep their memories alive, as it rightly should...

DDR Museum
Another must-visit Ostalgie strong-hold is the DDR Museum. Located right in the center of Berlin across from the Berliner Dom, the museum is perhaps one of the first places to go if you want to learn more about East German history in the city. This interactive museum has exhibitions that are all about the daily life in the former DDR in all its morbid glory! From the Stasi secret police, the Trabant car to the rather stark and austere DDR style housing and plenty more. Here is where you will get to immerse yourself into a different time and experience 40 years of the DDR.

Unterwelten
Speaking of an ‘immersion’, how about doing so literally? Descend into the bowels of the city and get yourself a piece of history in a place that is as different from a museum or a monument as it can possibly be. I’m talking of Berlin’s Unterwelten. Most people would not have been to a bunker or an abandoned U-Bahn tunnel, so now’s your chance. The Berlin Unterwelten offers five daily English tours through subterranean Berlin. You can experience World War II bombing raids through the eyes of citizens, see a former mother and child bunker or walk through the escape tunnels under the Berlin Wall.

Dinner and a movie, perhaps?
The city’s stunning Karl-Marx-Allee boasts two of the DDR’s cult cinemas, the Kino Kosmos and the Kino International—both offering you a different twist on your normal movie night. Kino Kosmos has a mammoth 3,400 seats and was the DDR’s largest cinema. Its architecture and typography will transport you in a different time. Still on the Karl-Marx-Allee, Café Sibylle offers cinemagoers a convenient option for a pre- or post-cinema coffee. The café exhibits authentic DDR flair with original painted murals covering its walls and everyday objects from 1950s East Germany dotted around its rooms.   

(An edited version of this column first appeared in the 23rd June2019 issue of The Free Press Journal newspaper's Weekend section on page 3 https://www.freepressjournal.in/weekend/how-berlin-has-kept-its-nostalgia-intact)

A Serving of Nostalgia

From Gurugram and Hyderabad to Bengaluru and yes, even Mumbai, the new guard of ‘Bombay-style’ restaurants are boldly making their presence felt on India’s culinary map.

By Raul Dias

Blame it on diner apathy, owner ennui or just plain old economic unfeasibility—whatever be the reason—it’s no big surprise that the original ‘Bombay-style’ restaurant genus in Mumbai is dying an excruciatingly slow death. While its already shutters down for some of the old vanguards like Dhobi Talao’s Bastani & Co. and Brabourne, others like the dusty old Kyani and Sassasian are tottering along with an arthritic limp.
Interestingly, while that’s happening, around the country, riding the crest of the nostalgia wave is a bunch of zeitgeisty new champions of the genre. Places that are surging ahead, breathing new life into a graph that’s waning rather woefully. Places that are making it their mission to give a stylish new fillip to Irani joint edible vestiges like good old brun maska and kheema pao, along with Mumbai street food classics like dabeli and bhel puri–all laced with the right doses of nostalgia thrown in for good measure, Bentwood chairs sitting atop vintage mosaic tiles et al!
Even cities like London and New York have cottoned onto this trend with the Dishoom chain of Irani-style restaurants and Talli Joe in the former and Paowalla in the latter taking a determined bite off the ‘schmaltz-y’ pie.
Here are a few desi doppelgangers channeling the Bombay restaurant nostalgia:

GYMKHANA 91, Mumbai
Inspiration is much more than a mere 11-letter word for the people behind this spanking new, nostalgia-driven bar and restaurant located slap bang in the center of Mumbai’s de facto restaurant super hub of Lower Parel. Besides pinching the first part of its name from the uber-popular and similarly themed Gymkhana restaurant in London’s posh Mayfair neck of the woods, Gymkhana 91 has a certain ‘Old Boys Club’ look and feel to it without being stuffy and foreboding. Here, one spies—as you sip on libations like the vodka-based Rustom nu soda and the bourbon-spiked Mumbai presidency—wrought iron chandeliers that hang from a dark-lacquered oak pitched roof, cut glass cathedral windows and an eight-foot clock keeping with the old times when gymkhanas across Mumbai had a clock tower in the vicinity. The food on offer here ranges from inspired (there we go again!) egg dishes like Kejriwal toast and the whimsically named Parsi-style Rati Aunty’s chutney edu pattice, to ersatz takes on more eggy breakfast classics like Parsi akuri and Bombay’s masala omelette that are not so blithe opening acts to mains like patra ni macchi, Byculla’s chicken Russian cutlets and mutton kheema pao.

RUSTOM’S, New Delhi
A Parsi mom-n-pop gone a wee mod. That’s the perfect way to describe this smallish restaurant in South Delhi that opened a year or so ago. Run by former food writer and bawi, Kainaz Contractor and former hotelier Rahul Dua, Rustom’s may claim to go beyond the ubiquitous dhansak and salli boti offerings of most so-called Parsi restaurants. But then one is instantly drawn in by a series of Parsi clichés that take the form of vintage grandfather clocks, antique crockery cupboards and an ambient soundtrack featuring the likes of old-school classics—The Beatles, Abba, Miles Davis and the Parsi favourite Frank Sinatra! Just as you enjoy the toothsome brilliance of the maghi na cutlet and the kolmi fry, dishes like akoori and eeda cheese balls take you back to the egg-obsessed Parsi home, while others like the decidedly veggie, okra-rich bheeda ma dahi and tarkari pulao show you that there truly is enjoyment beyond meat. Non-alcoholic beverages like the milky Parsi chai and the unctuous Rustom’s hot chocolate, though anathema to the ‘mota peg’ loving Parsis, are encore-worthy.  

CAFÉ IRANI CHAII, Mumbai
Grabbing headlines a year ago for being the first new Irani restaurant to open in Mumbai in 50 years, this modest little Irani café truly is a welcome addition to the dying breed. Sitting along a tiny lane in central Mumbai’s Mahim area, Café Irani Chaii is like a shiny, new portal into a moth-eaten era, with its glass countertop bearing egg trays and large glass jars holding forth bull’s eye peppermint candy and Parle-G biscuits. Its faux Bentwood chairs, glass covered tables and mirror-paneled walls giving it more and more cred. With prices almost on par with the few old Irani cafés still left standing, its mawa cakes and brun maskas curry fond favour with the pocket moneyed school kids. Those wishing to take a trip down memory lane can indulge in dishes like the Irani zereshk polow and mutton paya soup, best washed down with a Pallonji brand ginger or masala soda, or better still, a piping hot (chipped) mug of Bournvita!

DISHKIYAOON, Mumbai
In a classic case of one copycat copying another, this year-old, BKC-located all day diner cum bar shamelessly apes London’s Dishoom quartet–which paradoxically, is itself a pastiche of many old Bombay Irani restaurants’ elements—right from its onomatopoeic name to its décor (read: faux telephone box, exposed Edison bulbs etc) and fare on offer. Here, Chef Clyde Comello takes on classic Bambaiyya-style favourites like a vada pav, transforming it into a deconstructed vada pav salad, while chakna—a beer bar favourite is sent off as a delicately plated chana chur garam, replete with a very au courant flourish of micro greens topping it. Cocktails here reinforce the nostalgic leitmotif with specimens like the filter coffee martini, gur & sugarcane mojito and the tart, tamarind-redolent Bombay to Benaras that reminds one of the bunta sodas one drank at Irani joints in the era when twitter was just another name for birdsong!

SODABOTTLEOPENERWALA, New Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Thane, Mumbai
As one of the earliest torch bearers of the Neo Bombay restaurant movement, SodaBottleOpenerWala (SBOW), has over the years, metastasised into a virtual army of outposts that have sprung up in several Indian cities, with the newest and most ironic of all being readied to open its stained-glass doors in the Irani café stronghold of South Mumbai’s Colaba neighbourhood. With a decidedly eclectic Mumbai-style menu, owner and serial restaurateur A.D. Singh has made sure that SBOW’s Parsi signature dishes like berry pulao, Parsi mutton masala roast, prawn patio and chicken farcha rub shoulders with Bombay street food icons like kanda bhaji, Tardeo A/C Market Mamaji’s grilled sandwich and a Bhendi Bazaar sheekh paratha. The ‘Irani Chai Bar’ is another interesting concept, where everything from the luridly-coloured raspberry soda in bottles to the tequila-heavy Daruwalla Vimto comes heavily spiked with nostaligia. All this, in SBOW restaurants that each pay rich tribute to the quirkiness of erstwhile Irani eateries with their décor, the lynchpin of which is a take on the rather comic Bastani & Co. rules’ board emblazoned with diktat’s like “No talking to the cashier, no newspaper, no leg on chair, no combing” and such.

THE BOMBAY CANTEEN, Mumbai
Prima facie, you’d be forgiven for dismissing The Bombay Canteen (TBC), nestled in the concrete jungle of Mumbai’s erstwhile mill bastion of Lower Parel, as another grunge-obsessed, exposed-brickwork-meets-industrial-chic space. A motif that seems to be the cliché of every second restaurant that’s debuted in ‘Maximum City’ over the last few years. But take some time out to peel off its patina-rich layers, look under its old Parsi-style terracotta floor tiles and peer through its coloured glass-accented window panes and you’ll see a core that’s deliciously refreshing and reassuringly familiar. And nostalgia is one of the main reasons why New York-based ‘Old Bombay Boy’ Chef Floyd Cardoz decided to set TBC up as a paean to his—and the city’s—past. Everything from a Kutchi dabeli bada pao sandwich and a surprisingly piscine take on bhelpuri with the seafood bhel to cocktails like the gin raspberry sharbat and tamarind whiskey shake feature on its kitschy menu that reads like an ad from a 70s newspaper. So popular is this turn, that Cardoz has now exported the concept of the Bombay restaurant to New York with his brand new Paowalla in downtown Manhattan’s trendy SoHo, that’s garnering some solid press.

(A shorter, edited version of this article first appeared in the 27th February 2017 issue of India Today Magazine, India)