Travel Blog : Bombay / Mumbai Revisited

[tsquare]

This was a fantastic blog - thank you for the vada info.

You brought home lots of those prepared mixes that I see at the store - how do you know which are good or are most worth buying? We just bought a few items this afternoon such as black chickpeas and menthi leaves, but none of those mixes. I guess I am lucky that Michael is in the kitchen grinding spices and pureeing onions for our fish curry tonight!

[percyn]

This was a fantastic blog - thank you for the vada info.

You brought home lots of those prepared mixes that I see at the store - how do you know which are good or are most worth buying? We just bought a few items this afternoon such as black chickpeas and menthi leaves, but none of those mixes. I guess I am lucky that Michael is in the kitchen grinding spices and pureeing onions for our fish curry tonight!

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Thanks for the kind words all, I am glad I could share this small experience.

Tsquare, most of what I brought back are (ground) spices from a place that specializes in them. There are only a few mixes, like the Falooda (a milk based drink with coriander seeds and arrowroot) which I cant seem to find easily in the states.

As for spices, different cooks prefer different brands and these are from Motilal's, a famous spice purveyor in Bombay. My grandmother would only cook with Motilal's spices and people still travel across town to its only location to buy their spices.

[rkolluri]

Thanks Percyn.

That certainly brought back memories and some feelings of envy. Having lived in Bombay as a kid and a teenager it is certainly great to hear from someone who appreciates the city and its food as much as I did (do). I still call it my city even though I have spent less than a quarter of my life there.

My father worked for a company with Parsi management and I can recall going to Parsi weddings and celebrations that did not look much different from the pictures you have.

If I had to do the same trip I think I would try to do most of the things you did with some additional South Indian places from Matunga and some street food (bhel puri, pav bhaji, etc.) thrown in. I have some good memories of some of those places and I will need to check them out again to see if they are really as good as I remember them to be. I guess one would need to be careful with street food now that we are older and have "weaker" stomachs.

Seeing the picture of the fish roe pickle also brought a smile to my face. I was a vegetarian when I was in India and so I am not familiar with that product. However, I did notice that it was from Navsari a town we lived in for three years in the early seventies. I have not seen that name in print in a long time.

Thanks again. I really appreciate the effort you put into this travel blog.

[percyn]

If I had to do the same trip I think I would try to do most of the things you did with some additional South Indian places from Matunga and some street food (bhel puri, pav bhaji, etc.) thrown in.  I have some good memories of some of those places and I will need to check them out again to see if they are really as good as I remember them to be.  I guess one would need to be careful with street food now that we are older and have "weaker" stomachs.

I agree with you and we were supposed to go to a Pav Bhaji place in Tardev and a dosa place in Matunga, but it was scheduled for the days we were not feeling too good. Luckily, I was able to squeeze in a Kachori a few days before, my sister in law made Dahi Puri for us and are lucky to have a decent dosa place not far from our house here, so I can get dosas anytime.

Kachori

Dahi Puri

Edited January 4, 2009 by percyn (log)

[Flotch]

Hey Percyn,

Were you living in Bandra? Seems like you visited Seaside Cafe at Bandstand near the Taj Land's End for breakfast. Was that Tavaa in bandra you visited? I'm from the suburb so got a bit excited seeing it and Copper Chimney as well. Also, was the kebab palce you visited called Kareem's? It's located on Carter Road.

[faine]

Oh man, you're making me miss Mumbai! I've been to a few of those restaurants and am now extremely hungry for roomali roti, boti kebab and dahi puri....

I can verify that anglo-Indian cuisine can be very tasty in the right hands. Especially the Indian take on chili crab. Yum. And it's hard to resist chili chicken, as unhealthy as it may be!

Do you have the recipe for those stuffed crabs? They look divine.

Thank you so much for bringing back a ton of great memories. I'm hoping to make it back this summer and eat everything in sight.