However, I think it is now the time to leave aside the knitting for a little while and start sewing with those wonderful fabrics I bought. Cotton dresses are definitely calling. This weather is also making me second-homesick for Bombay. This is almost like their autumn. It puts me in mind of food. Which is never really much of a stretch for me. Most things do.
Here is a list of food I miss from Bombay. Sometimes it is all about the food; sometimes the place where you have food is just as important.
1. The Parsi eatery Kyani’s in Dhobi Talao for the bun maska (essentially just fresh bread with butter), the plum cake, mawa cake and the chai. The chai is monumentally shitty. I’m fairly sure they just boil the same pot on the stove endlessly, leaving it full of chunks of milk and tasting more of sugar and water than anything else. Nevertheless, I love it and wouldn’t change it for the world.
2. The apple pie at Yazdani Bakery near Flora Fountain. Again, it is another Parsi eating place with similarly delicious bun maska and questionable chai. But the apple pie is a must. The ginger biscuits are also a must. But just look at it. It is this tiny, red gabled bakery surrounded by grey, faded, characterless buildings. Yazdani is from a fairytale.
3. The location of Harbour View watering hole for their buy-three-get-one-free beer deals. A cheap place to get alcohol, with views of the water and of the Taj Hotel. A rare bird indeed.
4. Gokul bar in Colaba for their masala papad and cheap alcohol. Fantastically unpretentious pub which usually has a mix of middle aged men drinking whiskey and college kids drinking too much of everything. It is dim, smoky and dusty and absolutely perfect.
5. Again in Colaba, I miss the deliciously oily steak with onions from the Goan eatery New Martin. Lord, is there anything those Goans don’t do well? Sausages, steaks, fish, beautiful beaches, chilled bear (or child bear, if you want to spell it properly)....
6. My dear old neighbourhood bakery, A1 Bakery for those delicious pavs that came home crusty on the outside and soft and steaming on the inside. I liked nothing better on hot Mumbai days than sitting on my window seat to catch any skerrick of breeze with hot buttered pavs and milky sweet chai. They also had the best mawa cake in the city. The guys who worked there knew my order pretty swiftly; 6 pav, three mawa cakes. Never fail.
7. If I may go a little Western on your arse, I wish here to pause and remember the beef sandwich with chipotle sauce and onions from Wich Latte in Colaba. They redecorated and got rid of it! It is chicken now. Damn political correctness. That sandwich was like Mexican heaven on a plate.
8. On the topic of sandwich-like items, I can’t leave out the Plant Burger from Theobroma’s, a shop set up by a Parsi woman and her daughter to bring delicious chocolatey baked goods to Mumbai. I don’t know when they introduced the lunch food, but it is sooooo delicious. I was violently ill a couple of times during my stay there, and that still didn’t stop me pigging out on their Plant Burgers and the delicious variety of brownies that is their speciality. Went straight through me, but was worth every stomach wrenching second. (Please forgive the detail. I have a problem with filters, especially in this E-world. Anonymity is a blessing for me, but evidently will be a curse for you if you read me too much.)
9. Candies in Bandra was a great place to spend a lot of time. In terms of food, I usually got the kheema (spiced mince meat) roll or the okra chips with yoghurt dip, plus the chocolate lava for dessert (yes, it is as good and gooey as it sounds). The food was probably not the main thing, though it was fantastic to get a whole heap of stuff and pig out under the trees on a hot day. The location was priceless though. You could spend all afternoon there chatting and smoking with friends. It’s usually a real college crowd, or upper middle class families eating there, but it’s also a fun place to people watch. Withering social comments abounded. Much fun had by all!
10. The final place is a whole suburb. Matunga. It is fenced in on three sides by train lines, and has beautiful old houses and green patches of parks here and there. It is almost like a mini South India in the heart of Mumbai. There is a plethora of eating places, mostly South Indian. We usually haunted Cafe Mysore for the spring dosa and the idlis steamed in jackfruit leaves, or Cafe Madras for the filter coffee and the medu vada (black lentils which are turned into a batter and then fried, served with a spicy tamarind stew known as sambhar). There is also another Parsi place here, called Koolar. It is a tiny place, but it feels big because the walls are covered with mirrors. There are a bunch of old soft drink ads on the walls, along with some questionable 80s glamour pictures. This is the place to be for Irani chai (black tea with lemon or mint).
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