The Fort Finely Chopped Food Walk

OK.  I am finding these food walks by Kalyan Karmaker slightly addictive.  The first one in Dadar that I blogged about was so interesting that I was keen to get on another.  Unfortunately I missed two - trying out Bengali food in Oshiwara and what would have been the mother of all food walks - Ramzan in Bohri Mohalla.  But we did manage to get on his latest outing - sampling the eclectic culinary delights of the Fort area. Mr Jules was keen on this one too as Fort is where his office is located.  I was hoping that he might even find something more interesting to eat at lunchtime, than his usual tuna salad Subway sandwich!

We didn't eat from this street stall but I had to take a photo of the all famous Bombay Sandwich - a sandwich filled with healthy salad and then toasted. You see these red and blue bread bags everywhere in Mumbai

As usual, Kalyan showed us some hideaway places that we would not have found ourselves (including a pretty church) and lectured us at every stop-off on the various foods, drinks and restaurant ownership.  It is this detailed and interesting approach to Mumbai food that is the reason Kalyan is becoming quite the celebrity in this city - he recently appeared on The Foodie TV show and yesterday he was out and about with a Korean TV crew at some of his favourite eateries.  He also writes numerous columns including one for the Times of India website and is always out and about doing interesting things to promote Mumbai's wonderful food scene. 

Please see my previous blog on how to contact Finely Chopped about his upcoming walks.  He also does private, bespoke tours for expats, tourists and groups (including Virgin airline crews!).  

So here is the story of the walk in pictures.  

We kicked off the walk opposite The Bombay Store at a building where Kalyan used to work in his market research days - looking back and up across the road is this old HMV sign.  So nostalgic!

Our first stop - the Parsi bakery and cafe Yazdani.  Typical of many fading Parsi cafes in Bombay, this one had peeling paint and an adorable geriatric owner.  But the bread (particularly the Brun Maska) was to die for.

Buttery cakes for sale in the glass cabinet outside

Here is the owner - wearing a back brace due to severe spinal problems - but amazingly he ran the Mumbai Marathon last year - he proudly showed us a newspaper clipping about it as we entered the cafe.  He reminded me so much of the eccentric Boman Kohinoor from my other favourite Parsi eaterie, Britannia.  The very pretty girl on the left who was also on the tour is a reader of BombayJules! Hopefully she doesn't mind me putting up her picture here.

Buttery puff pastry in the foreground and the divine, pillowy soft white bread buns served with butter in the background.  Mr Jules will be making a weekly visit to collect our bread from Yazdani from now on!

I was fascinated by the collection of bodybuilding pictures on the wall of Yazdani - Parsis are famed for their bodybuilding passion - something I will have to investigate and blog about in the future!

More sensational crusty bread.

We were so privileged to be allowed in the back of Yazdani to see the bread being made - here are the loaves being put into a cavernous red hot oven

Here are the (ecstatic looking) bread makers - their hands covered in flour

The finished product

The next stop was the Punjabi Moti Halval where we sampled thick, sweet Lassi - so thick that you needed a spoon to eat/drink it. Luscious!

The takeaway version

It's not all about the food: Kalyan showed us this beautiful church (St Thomas's Cathedral) right in the middle of Fort on Nariman Road.  We didn't even know it existed.  Built during the British Raj and completed in 1718 - Churchgate Station actually refers to St Thomas's.

A beautiful English church interior - save for the fans!

We came across this fabulous and beautifully restored old Dodge vintage car outside the Bombay Samachar (the red painted brick building just off Horniman Circle.

Mr Jules bought a kilo of the finest South Indian coffee from this place - Philips. Cost 400 Rs.  I think Mr Jules was actually the only person to buy anything on this walk - well done Mr Jules!

The next stop in Khao Galli (food alley) - an awesome street food stall serving Bombay's finest Pav Bhaji.  Pav Bhaji is one of the most popular and delicious street foods you can get - it is basically a veg curry served with buttery bread buns (pav).  The crowd was big and the turnover fast at this place.  

The Pav Bhaji was sensational - one of the best things I've ever eaten in Mumbai!  I'd like to say it's healthy but a slab of butter is added upon serving and the bread is also slathered with butter.  But you only live once right?  This lot was probably about 70 Rs / 70p (and served three).

Kalyan looks on as the rest of us stuff ourselves!

Next door we had a plate of snacks - crispy Onion Bhajis and Wada served with coriander chutney and chilli.  I told Kalyan that the Onion Bhajis were as good as the ones in the UK ;)

The next place - Pradeep Gomantak - a Gomantak restaurant serving South Indian specialities. Here is Kalyan telling us to get seated.

The Bombil Fry (or Bombay duck - which is fish and famously served deep fried in batter and is soft as butter inside and very moreish)

Our second last food stop...another Parsi restaurant and a favourite of Kalyan's Parsi wife.

I was fascinated by this Parsi manufactured raspberryade....which correctly states 'Contains No Fruit'!!

We sampled the Salli Boti - a sweet mutton curry topped with crispy matchstick potatoes. One of my favourite Parsi dishes.

Our last stop - dessert!  A small shop with this guy sat outside making fresh Jalebis (main ingredients, flour, sugar, yoghurt, cardamom, saffron).  A demonstration of how they are made follows:

The jalebi mixture...

....which is then spooned into a kind of piping bag.

Then the cook swirls lots of shapes straight into the boiling oil one after the other

Do you think this Jalebi Wallah has been eating too many of the fruits of his own labour?

Before, during and after

 At the end of the tour, we were given a little box of sweet treats to have after.  Lovely!

A Very Fine Finely Chopped Food Walk

For an expat dining out in Mumbai, it is all too easy to only frequent well known restaurants and Sunday brunch locations. Ones which can be considered 'safe options' that cater well to our western constitutions. But what about trying out some of Mumbai's more traditional eateries?  The kind of places that are part of the very fabric of the city?

Mumbai is without doubt, the most cosmopolitan city in India - but it is also the most itinerant.  Over many decades, millions of people have flocked to the city from rural villages all over India, each one bringing their own traditions, faiths and recipes.  Nowhere else in India will you find such a variety of regional cooking; rich meat curries from the Punjab; coconutty prawn curries from Kerala; vegetarian thalis from Gujurat; Irani influenced Parsi berry pulaos; the Portuguese balchaos of Goa.  The list is endless.  The most well known of these food styles can be found at the best Indian restaurants in town. But in order to get right under the skin of itinerant Mumbai you have to dig a little deeper - by going right to the soul of the community.

Last night, Mr Jules and I did exactly that by joining a 'Finely Chopped Food Walk'. Finely Chopped is actually a food blog and Facebook page with a huge following that is lovingly written by Kalyan Karmakar - a guy who works in market research whilst penning all things food related in his spare time.  As the blog became more and more popular - and supported by the explosive growth in dining out - he created the concept of the Food Walk. The aim of which is to take a group of people right to the heart of regional cooking; to experiment with cuisine at local restaurants (where you may not even find a word of English on the sign!), to walk around an area and shop for ingredients along the way, and to get people to meet other people with similar food interests.  A forum for discovery, discussion and enjoyment.

Dadar was the location of last night's walk - an epicentre for 'typical' Maharashtrian cuisine. Previously, the only Maharashtrian food that we had sampled was of the Mumbai street food variety - Wada Pav, Sev Puri, Pani Puri etc.  Nothing particularly 'substantial'. Maharashtrian cuisine itself, being the cuisine of Marathi (and hence Mumbai) people actually covers a wider range of districts -  from Nagpur in the very North, to Mumbai and Pune in the middle, Kolhapur in the south and the Konkan coast down the west side of India.

The group of 14 introducing themselves in Aaswad.
A mixture of expats and locals
Kalyan at the helm and resplendent in orange

Within 30 minutes of meeting at the first eatery - Aaswad - we had already been introduced to a diverse group of 12 other individuals - including a travel writer, a food blogger, a corporate lawyer and even an American ex-fighter pilot!!  A refreshing drink was swiftly brought out to get things started - Panha - which is a mango juice infused with cardamom and saffron.  As Kalyan proceeded to give us a commentary on the origins and ingredients of all the dishes we would be sampling, the food began to arrive:  crispy and flat Thalee peeth pancake; soft batata (potato) vada fragrant with mustard seeds; rice-crispy like sabudana vada; delicious, sweet mango aamras puri; and lastly, a refreshing amba daal salad. (Some detailed in the pictures below).  My eyes were already beginning to feel bigger than my stomach!

Thalee Peeth - flat and crispy and tasted
a bit like an onion baji.  Dip it in white butter and yoghurt first.

Yummy Batata Vada broken open - have it with a sprinkle of chilli and a dollop of coconut chutney

Sabudana Vada - fried dumplings of sago. Crispy and wholesome

Divine Mango Amraas Puri - mango pureed with a bit of milk in which to dunk puris
- which tasted like donuts but better!

After spending an hour or so at Aaswad, we moved out of the restaurant and across the road to visit a local spice shop.  The shopkeeper allowed us to smell the various fragrant spices and tangy pickles and we were even able to taste one or two of them.   I purchased a meat rub with a sophisticated hint of star anise - a good sized packet for a mere 35 Rs.  A stallholder at Crawford Market had previously tried to rip me off for 300 Rs for a small bag of madras curry powder, so I was even more pleased with my purchase.

Spice kiosk across from Aswaad - smelling and tasting before buying

Colourful pickles

Then we moved on to the next shop - the very charming Kokan Bhavan - which specialises in ingredients from the Konkan coast.  In particular, the juice of Kokum which is a berry unique to the region and which is used in curries and sherbets.  We bought two large bags of papads for deep frying, a rustic looking mortar and pestle (for grinding our spices properly!) and we were given a bottle of the Kokum juice free of charge.  We are going to experiment with this juice to see if it makes a good gin cocktail!

Kokum Juice - perhaps a nice mixer for a gin cocktail?

Spices at Kokan Bhavan

Next we moved on to Prakash restaurant for a short stop and a taster of 'missal' - a spicy concoction consisting of mung beans, potato, curry powder and topped with sev (crunchy gram flour noodles like you find in Bombay Mix).  This was a bit too chilli hot for me but it was nicely washed down with Piyush - a bit like a sweet lassi and totally delicious.

Waiter at Prakash serving us sweet and refreshing Piyush

Our final destination (which was just as well as I was almost at bursting point) was Sachin restaurant - serving traditional veg and non-veg Gomantak food. Gomantak is a style of cooking that belongs to the Saraswat community from the coastal areas of Southern Maharashtra and Goa and is therefore very seafood based. First to come out was the Sol Kadi - a salty coconut based drink that most of us unfortunately did not like - worth trying but I think it is an acquired taste.  Then in quick succession - prawn fry, Bombay Duck (Bombil fish) Fry, and Sukha Mutton - meat cooked in a most unctuous and deeply flavoured sauce.

The not so popular Sol Kadi - salty and warm.

Prawns Fry - who can resist something so crispy and deep fried! Yum.

All the while we were receiving a detailed commentary on the food - their origins and ingredients and some of the history of the restaurant owners.  Kalyan really knows his stuff and is so enthusiastic about the food, you can't help but enthuse with him! We left the restaurant thoroughly but pleasantly bloated, holding a complimentary box of sweets to have later. We really enjoyed our outing and it made such a change from the usual slump on the sofa in front of a Sunday night movie. Not only that, but we met an interesting and diverse group of people, experienced completely new tastes, found new places to shop and we also came to appreciate Dadar for being a community offering a quality food culture. A place that would have otherwise remained hidden to us forever.

I can't wait to go on another Food Walk.  Kalyan also mentioned he may be offering cookery lessons during the quieter monsoon period...watch this space as I will be first in the queue for that!

In order to get on a walk – keep tabs on the Finely Chopped website (www.finelychopped.net) or email Kalyan on k.finelychopped@gmail.com to see when the next walk is coming up. We paid 2,000 Rs each which included all restaurant food, a few freebies and bottled water. The outing lasted just under four hours (6 to 10pm).

 A few other images:

We walked past this street stall selling sweet Jalebis

Small onions at Kokan Bhavan

Sweet stall outside Prakash restaurant

Our last stop.

Ramadan Feasting on Mohammed Ali Road

"This is not a recommended activity for vegetarians or people currently or pre-emptively weak of stomach", stated the email inviting us to go and try out 'Ramzan' on Mohammed Ali Road.  Well I am certainly not a vegetarian but I can definitely be weak of stomach so it was with some trepidation that last night, I decided to join a group of work colleagues intent on eating kebabs, sweets, dried fruit, mutton brain, and bone marrow soup (YUM).

Ramzan or Ramadan as it is more commonly known is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and is observed the world over by  Muslims as a month of fasting. The month lasts 29–30 days based on the "visual sightings of the crescent moon". The word Ramadan comes from the Arabic root ramida or ar-ramad, which means scorching heat or dryness.

Fasting is endured from dawn until sunset and Muslims must refrain from consuming food and drinking liquids (even water!). According to Islam, there are rewards to be had from fasting anyway, but in this month they are believed to be multiplied.  And from what I could tell, this means everyone coming out at night to stuff themselves!

During the month of Ramzan, Mohammed Ali Road (a rather depressing stretch of road in South Mumbai but actually near Chor Bazaar where we buy antiques) becomes a floodlit kilometre long buffet where stalls and shops sell street food well into the early hours.  It is buzzing, extremely crowded (although not too bad at 9pm when we arrived), dirty and I would say, gastromically risky.  I certainly would not go there to try the foods unless you are with someone who seriously knows what they are doing (thankfully I was).  If you want to check it out and don't have a guide, I would recommend only frequenting the establishments on the map downloadable here:

http://mumbaiboss.com/2011/08/10/mb-maps-mohammed-ali-road-2/

And don't judge a book by its cover...some of these places may look like Hepatitis Central but I had one of the most delicious flatbreads I have ever tasted and some other 'interesting' dishes.  Here are the photos:

When we got out of our taxi we saw a commotion in a side street so went to investigate.  Turns out that an important Muslim religious leader was visiting this mosque and they are waiting for him to come out.  What you can just glimpse in between the crowd of men in the foreground, is a seriously flashy mercedes waiting to take him away!

Here he is...apparently the equivalent of the Pope but I am not sure.  He's the old fella with the beard and pointy hat just to the left of the pole.

A stall selling nuts and dried fruits.  You commonly see this - shop keepers sitting on the table from which they are selling their wares

  


Parting of the waves in this street brimming with people (interesting Muslim dress in the foreground) and mopeds. You have to hop out of the way of pesky motorbikes and mopeds the whole time on these streets

The first of our culinary adventures at Hotel India on Khara Tank Road.  A chicken roll, a stewed kidney curry, a roti and customary onion garnish.  I was very brave and tried the kidney dish and it was very tasty.  I was a bit scared as the plate looked a little dirty and probably had been washed in unfiltered water.  You've got to show willing though eh?  This whole lot came to about 140 rupees (£1.80)

A close up of the chicken roll.  Note the paper plate which has been recycled from cardboard packaging - I love the ways in which things get re-used in India.

En-route to the main course.  It is hard to describe the sights, sounds, smells (most of which are pretty bad!) and frenetic-ness

This is at Surti 12 Handi on Gujar Street.  My colleauge recommended that we try the mutton stew/soup from this place which is made from 12 other soups and takes all day to make.  This guy's feet are a bit too close to the action but still, he looks like he is cooking up a storm.

These are the breads being made next door to go with the soup.  The guy is sitting on the oven itself.  They are rolling out the breads into rounds and then sticking them on to the wall of the oven to cook.  It was hot in there!

Here is the mutton stew and the bread.  The mutton had unappetising looking bone marrow floating in it so I managed to skirt around the edges with the bread and just ate the gravy.  It did taste very good!  And the bread was amazing! Crispy and salty, it tasted a little like Jacobs Cream Crackers but better.  Highly recomended.  We sat outside on the street on a long table to eat this and paid about 140 rupees for three of us.. 

Hyderabadi Kichida from Chand Harissa by the YMCA basketball court.  This is rice, lentils and other ingredients that have been cooking all day long in the big pot below.  Topped with crispy friend onions.  To be honest, I didn't like this place, it was too close to a dirty gutter and I didn't think the utensils looked very sanitary.  I did have a few mouthfuls of this gruel like concoction and it was OK but not amazing.  110 rupees with a big bottle of water and a soda.

The big pot mentioned above - covered by the silver tray. Right opposite here is a kind of soup kitchen where seriously destitute people go to get food.  My colleaugue (who I thought was buying some more food) paid 100 rupees to buy 10 packets of food which were then handed out accordingly to a waiting line of women, men and children. I did not take a photo.

Approach to a sweet stall.

Close up of the above sweet stall where they are making some sort of deep fried egg dish - a sort of pancake...and a heart-attack on a plate.

Last stop.  We were going to carry on eating but we were too full by this point.  So one of the girls picked up a meshwi chicken kebab for her boyfriend (chicken breast marinated in yoghurt and mild spices).  It looked good despite appearances!

On the way home, I was advised to buy some pro-biotics as a precaution against stomach bugs.  I took two last night and two this morning and whether this helped or not I don't know - but I am pleased to report that so far I have not had any repercussions!


Postscript: Ramadan is expected to end on Sunday 19th August (2012) so Mumbai readers, you've only got just over a week or so to get in on the experience.