White wine and sea breeze.

I have been away from Mumbai for 5 years- which has taken a major toll on my knowledge of it. Places to eat, roads to take and things to check out.  I always depend on my friends to take me to the right places at the right times. And whenever we go I always find myself in Bandra west, consistently like clockwork. Bandra is the ultimate hangout destination. It has the sea, the food and the people.

So this weekend we decided to get a bit posh- how about some wine. I was surprised, wine isn’t exactly the drink for outings. More for classy parties or an exquisite gift that your teatotaling boss cant drink. I was not at all excited.  I was in for an amazing surprise.

We went to Ivy wine tavern in Bandra West, flagship store of Sula wines. On offer were wines not available even in stores. Amazing ambience with a guitar playing singer filling in for the background music, which was really good. Requests for old and new English songs were rendered amazingly well. This might hit the wallet was the first thought that came to my mind. Again I was to be wrong. The prices which I thought would be per glass was actually per bottle! My experienced friend summoned a  white wine – Vin Apple Blanc – an apple infused white wine from the Menu which nicely displayed its offerings light and breezey, fruity, full bodied etc for newbies such as myself.

So how was it? Nice, very very nice. I don’t know anything about Wine, Vintage, Dryness etc etc. It just tasted damn good. The apple flavor was there yet wasn’t overbearing. Foodwise things looked still great. The Menu covered finger foods to full blown meals. All in all its an amazing wine experience. We didn’t realize how quick we finished the bottle – we went for another white twice as expensive, if I remember correctly a chenin blan. But this  one  didn’t quite reach the level set by the first. Not bad though.

Guitar guy came our way and my pal requested November Rain by GNR, I am sure if I brought my date to this venue I would have had a very very happy date.

I usually never dedicate lines to a crowd in a restaurant. But what a crowd! A very very heavy presence of the fairer sex in a very classy crowd. A lot of foreigners and seemingly artsy crowd made this experience very unique. As one of my cohorts rightly said, I fell in love many times since I stepped into this restaurant.

This place is a definite must do. If you are in Mumbai and don’t mind a bit of wine this cannot be missed.  If you have a date and don’t take her to this place, you need to get punched, in the face, by your date.

We didn’t eat our fill because we had to reserve place for Carter;s blue at carter road. Shawarma rules and Carter’s Blue makes it real good. But the most amazing and mindblasting element of this shawarma is eating them while sitting on the sea wall facing the Arabian sea, the tepid humid sea breeze in your face and a wonderful youthful Mumbai crowd having a good time. Its 12.15 am in the night and people still couldn’t find parking along the road. But some of us have to go to Office, I felt lucky that I had a 5 day work week.

One more wonderful night in Mumbai – god bless this city.

Preheating the stomach

Time for appraisals. You set goals for the coming year and get evaluated on how miserably you failed against the ones from last year.

But its important to set goals. Write down things. Last time I did was for my trip through the iconic Eat Street - VV Puram in Bangalore. With its several fables, I had to quite literally write down what to eat, where to eat and how much to eat.

Seems like I got some more noting down to do. I am poring over the plentitudes of blogs and articles about the legendary Mohammed Ali road during Ramazan. It would be very rare to not have heard of it, read about it or watched Foodie TV programs.

And so I aim - this Saturday, its going down.

Of Dahi Kachoris and Shoplifting

Dirty hands, check. Grimy sweat of non personal origin left over after a local train journey, check. Suspicious levels of hygiene and a crowd to rival concerts – all ready to eat Chaat in Bombay. Today I ate again what I feel is the best Dahi Kachori in the world– a huge kachori stuffed and layered with chutney, tomatoes, onions, sev and sweet dahi slopping over your fingers in a paper plate barely big enough to bear its content.  The multitudes of textures and flavors and the perfectly sweet dahi mixed with the tangy chutneys dripping on your feet as you bite into this wonderful UFO shaped creation. This is at Sri Ram sweets in Sai Baba Nagar Borivali, Mumbai. The place I grew up in. Many thanks to the Gujaratis, over here you would be forgiven to think you are in Gujarat. Their unending taste for fast food brings along many of these delights I miss everyday in Bangalore.

This was my after school succor. Some Dhokla, some dahi puri, some sev puri, some ras malai and on rare occasions a round of pani puri. Afternoon snacks meant many trips to Sri Rams for some chat. I used to eat poorly when growing up, was super thin and didn’t have much of any appetite. But this, bring it on anytime anywhere. I just had dinner and am salivating again.

Trips back are made so much better with food. And recollection of misadventures.

Now I am a law abiding citizen, usually when the traffic’s light. So while going through the place of from my formative years, I passed by an old building which used to have a shopping centre, perhaps the first modern ones in the country.  A chocolate fish shaped like a dolphin was the rage back then. Back then when we bought something, we pointed to stuff and pay the shopkeeper. Shopping mart was a new thing and I didn’t understand it completely when I was 5 years old. Nobody guarding the goods, just goodies on shelves which you could probably just pop into your pocket especially the dolphin – perhaps I thought its like an amusement park where you pay an entry fee and freak out.  The Mart closed down very soon, unfortunately. I hope it was the financial conditions rather than my ignorance. Anyways I am sure to have written enough to get me on a list. I am worried my Mom would read this.

Perspective for Lunch

My stomach churns. Literally. Any appetite that I might have built up or naturally occurring would shrink immediately. I have, unfortunately, reached this stage when it comes to lunch in office. I turn to Buddhism - have food to sustain the soul. Barely.

Well its not that bad.At least thats what I get told. I am offered perspectives. Think of all the hungry people in the world, who donot receive not a grain not a drop of water. And here you are bestowed with..with this. So stop cribbing and stop eating from my Lunch Box.

So I think I will try hard to describe my food with the suggested perspective - whats usually for lunch? Two pieces of lovely Indian Flat Bread prepared with a checkered baking technique, a healthy vegetable salad at suspicious levels of freshness, peas (usually) floating in a lissome gravy not to be confused with motor oil, fried and spiced vegetables in a slime gravy, white rice of a mysterious chalky variety with a distinctive unsettling character once ingested, more rice of same variety but rendered with tomato or soya infusing some character, a wonderful thin dal of such make and consistency only rivaled by dals in government hospitals, curd(yoghurt) diluted and re-diluted to ensure homoepathic consistency, salt water forgivably called 'rasam' and finally the actual and honest highpoint - fries which gets ruthlessly flicked off my plate by others deficient of food. The dessert is ok, strictly.

But there are alternatives. I can have some very boring sandwiches, fruits and some sprout salads.But there is a saving grace- a Manhattan Sandwich - entirely unrelated to the original Manhattan Sandwich. This double layered spicy mayo and vegie sandwich saves the day many a times. People visiting the Indian office from overseas, resort to this tried and tasted culinary marvel. But its not lunch.

So I had the best thing on offer today, a glass of sweet lime juice and some perspective. Those poor starving kids in other offices...