the ultimate gujju thali in mumbai ....

[howler]

i have my pick, but for crying out loud, i can't remember the exact street. anyway the place is thackers club, (NOT the thackersee on churchgate/marine drive) and you get to it by going north on the first road parallel to marine lines and taking your second right (something wadi).

ALMOST home cooked quality, beats purohit by a mile and then some. it really is a find, this place, and a bit of a secret .. almsot none of my eating out pals know about it.

[skchai]

i have my pick, but for crying out loud, i can't remember the exact street. anyway the place is thackers club, (NOT the thackersee on churchgate/marine drive) and you get to it by going north on the first road parallel to marine lines and taking your second right (something wadi).

ALMOST home cooked quality, beats purohit by a mile and then some. it really is a find, this place, and a bit of a secret .. almsot none of my eating out pals know about it.

Some links to busybee reviews. Is this the Thackers Club you are talking about?

It is on First Marine Street, according to the review:

Thackers:The best of Surti Gujarati food - in Class I comfort.

Here is the link to busybee's take on Purohit's:

Purohit's : Blessed are Purohit's thalis

While I'm at it (don't I have a lot of time on my hands!) here's his review of Panchavati Gaurav:

Panchavati Gaurav: The khatti-meethi Gujarati-Marwari thali restaurant

Finally fixed the links so they work; I guess you can't put a return immediately after the closing bracket of the "url" start tag?

Edited August 14, 2003 by skchai (log)

[skchai]

Somehow the links in my prev post are not being rendered properly. Perhaps it is because Invision PB seems to be choking on them for some reason I'm not sure. Maybe it doesn't like asp links? You may have to cut and paste.

Edited August 13, 2003 by skchai (log)

[howler]

no, its not the one busybee talks about. thats a proper business which also does all the catering (or used to anyway) for the gujarathi weddings in bombay.

thackers club is even pronounced differently ('thuqqar' club, to rhyme with sucker as opposed to thackers, which everybody said to rhyme with hackers. they should both be the same, though. and i bet they are both our version of 'thackeray'.)

[Vikram]

I'm afraid I've got bad news. The Thackers you are referring to is almost certainly Thacker Bhojanalay (which loosely was translated as Thacker Club) whicy was on Dadiseth Agiary Road. To get there you had to go down Chira Bazaar, which was straight on from Metro Cinema, not taking the usual left to the Princess Street flyover. At some point you'd see Dadiseth Agiary Road on your right and you went down almost to the other end and there would be Thacker Bhojanalay on your right.

It was one of those places where you had to pay first downstairs and you were given a token. True to the tradition of bhojanalays, you could buy a booklet for all your monthly dinners. The bhojanalys were started as co-operative kitchens for bachelors from the same community, who had left home to work in Bombay. Their best bet for getting the home food they starting a co-operative kitchen, usually with cooking in terns, until they could employ a fulltime cook, who would finally set it up as a restaurant in its own right, though functioning as a bhojanalay for those who could afford it. Many of the best and most authentic eating places in the city had their origins in these bhojanalays or khanevals - Sri Ramanayaka in Matunga, for example, for Mysore Tamil food, or Martin's for Goan.

Once you paid you were ushered upstairs to a spartan room and were offered a huge thali of pickles. In some ways I feel these pickles were the highlight of the meal - they were so fresh, so bursting with flavour, that you realise who over oily, over spiced and simply old concoctions are routinely served up to us in restaurants. You had barely chosen the pickles when the food would descend on you, and I mean that almost literally. It came with these boys who would compete with each other to force it on you. It was, as you say, totally delicious and homestyle, and quite unlike most restaurant versions of Gujju food.

But as you can see, I'm referring to it in the past tense because in a real tragedy, it shut down about four years back. When I asked someone in the neighbourhood why, they said the owner was growing old and was no longer confident in being able to maintain the quality. Also he was under pressure to mdoernise, improve, add airconditioning, and he just felt he didn't have the money or interest in doing so. And to prove the point, someone - allegedly one of his sons - did set up a thali place there (in the downstairs area) to capitalise on the reputation and it was crap. (It may still be there, but don't eat there. I mean, crap may be exagerrating it, but its not a patch on the original). I was told that the old man might have changed his mind and might be restarting, but I doubt it.

In that case, what are your options for a good Gujju thali in Bombay? Not Purohits - it was never that good and its shut down anyway. NEVER eat at Samrat, which many people go to - its rubbish served up for office goers. Chetna's is good, though more towards te Rajasthani style, which is HEAVY - don't even think of eating more than two dhal-bhatti-churmas. Panchavati Gaur, Golden Star (at Charni Road) are all OK, if not exactly scintillating. Rajdhani near Crawford market is really cramped and crowded, but also really quite good - always try their barbecued buttermilk, which sounds impossible, but it really quite a neat trick. Their (sweet) Gujju dhal is excellent. Thackers at Marine Lines is insanely rich, where others would use milk they use cream. Its tastes good, in a throat clotting sort of way.

I really wish Asha Jhaveri at Swati Snacks would consider offering a thali, since that would be something. Unfortunately this doesn't seem on the cards, so for a really good, unpretentious but excellent place I'd recommend another bhojanalay - Friends Union Joshi Club, usually just referred to as FUJC (the name is less odd if you consider its a literal translation of Joshi Mitramandal). To reach there walk down the Kalbadevi Road (go straight from Metro, then at the Princess St junction turn right and then take the first left) till you see it on the left hand side on the first floor. FUJC isn't Thacker Bhojanalay, but its in its simple excellence its the closest you'll come to it,

Vikram

[anil]

Try Aaram opp. Mahim Church. for excellent thalis in a no-nonsense settings.

[howler]

vikram - you are exactly right, its on dadaseth agiary road. but its open - with a new a/c section.

anyway, loved your post. VERY interesting to hear about the origins of thackers club.

i haven't lived in mumbai for years, now ... and when i do get back for my yearly december visit, everybody wants to drag me off to indigo, or some nonsense like that. but perhaps i shouldn't put it down so much - is the food any good?

hey have you ever had the good fortune to eat parsi food at the ripon club?

[Vikram]

everybody wants to drag me off to indigo, or some nonsense like that. but perhaps i shouldn't put it down so much - is the food any good?

Indigo is decidedly not nonsense. I don't know why I left Rahul Akerkar out of that earlier list of celebrity chefs - he certainly more than deserves to be on it, but I don't think its his style to do it. Indigo is outstanding - in my opinion, one of the very best restaurants in India. Admittedly if you are visiting infrequently from abroad, I wouldn't recommend you go there - why pass on the chance to eat all the Parsi, Gujarati or Konkani food you won't get anywhere else, in favour of Western style food which you'll get abroad?

But if you do go there, I don't think you'll be that disappointed. Indigo would be very good restaurant everywhere and in India, where ingredient quality is variable and, even more, consumer demands - more spicy, more veg, more sickening gluey cheese on everything - can dumb down the best menu, to run a restaurant like Indigo is exceptional.

Even more is that fact that Rahul has sustained it. Over the years other restaurants have come and gone in terms of quality, but Indigo remains as good as ever. Its not just the food - the ambience is great, elegant without being oppressive, both the downstairs dining area and terrace are lovely (the lounge is, inexplicably, The Black Hole Of Bombay, but lets overlook that). The bar is also, easily one of the best in Bombay.

Earlier this year I helped a friend at the Asian Wall Street Journal do a feature on the best restaurants in Bombay and since he explicitly said he wanted good food, whatever the ambience I took him to all my favourite joints: Martin's, Anantashram, Sarvi, Sri Ramanayaka and so on, and he loved them all, but he balked when I told him he had to go to Indigo. That wasn't why he came to Bombay he said. But he went and was really impressed. As he said in the piece he wrote, Indigo was a place recommended to him by people who said, "I don't normally go to such places, but..." and that was exactly the advice he gave.

And a little while back I was helping a friend to a listing of the top restaurants in the city. We thought about which we would place in the absolutely top, the only ones with full scores and almost simulatenously we said, "Indigo and Swati Snacks." I'll sing Swati's praises another day (though I suspect I already have on this list). If you have time for just one place in Bombay, go to Swati Snacks since you'll get food that is both distinctive to Bombay and outstanding. If you have more time though, and friends are taking you, go to Indigo.

Vikram

[Vikram]

hey have you ever had the good fortune to eat parsi food at the ripon club?

OF COURSE!!!! There are some elderly Parsi friends I cultivate almost exclusively for their Ripon Club membership (hopefully they aren't on eGullet). I love the place, all the antique furniture, the library where the most recent volumes are by that young Mr.Kipling, and the general aura of incipient decay, everything just held together by the excellence of the dhansak. Without the dhansak the place is nothing, so it had better be good - and it is.

I would, in fact, put it as the best dhansak in Bombay, but it is a bit difficult to recommend since you can't just walk in and order it (why not? The members should really consider raising revenue by making it a restaurant). In its absence the dhansak at Jimmy Boy's is decent, followed by Britannia and, rather distantly now, Paradise. The RTI dhansak might be good if it was dished out fresh from the pot instead of having to be reheated in those horrid foil containers.

I wish Parsis didn't consider dhansak an inauspicious dish, or wedding caterers like Goriwala's could dish it out, and going by the general excellence of their food, I'm sure it would be very good. Wedding caterers in general, BTW, are I think an important and often unacknowledged repository of regional culinary lore, but that is perhaps the subject matter for another thread.

Vikram

[howler]

RTI is decidedly down hill, as i found to my sorrow in jan. no more scrumptious veg. patties. are people no more scarfing down the wonderful veg, chicken and mutton patties? the pattie pastry was thick and sullen - where oh where are the crispy light flaky golden creation of yester year? even the patisserie at the taj disappoints - its like a deluxe version of the willingdon now.

i never dug paradise, just as i never liked victory stall either. btw, what happened to victory stall? and whatever happened to the sali boti in dadar .. oh what was that place around the corner from five gardens? i haven't eaten at britannia's- whats the buzz there?

and have you ever checked out the parsi catering service of the mysterious ladies from gowalia tank?

[skchai]

Thanks, Howler and Vikram, for this wonderful thread. Hope this doesn't spook anyone out, but it makes me feel as if Busybee is alive and well. . . .

[Vikram]

RTI is decidedly down hill, as i found to my sorrow in jan. no more scrumptious veg. patties. are people no more scarfing down the wonderful veg, chicken and mutton patties? the pattie pastry was thick and sullen - where oh where are the crispy light flaky golden creation of yester year?

Its really sad. Problems with their workforce I think. I still buy the bombil pickle sometimes, but everything else is best avoided.

i never dug paradise, just as i never liked victory stall either. btw, what happened to victory stall?

I'm not sure since its just a little past Martin's, and I never walk past Martin's! I think its a Dominos outlet now - and that's possibly an improvement on its food...

and whatever happened to the sali boti in dadar .. oh what was that place around the corner from five gardens? i haven't eaten at britannia's- whats the buzz there?

Will ask a Parsi Colony friend to check about Dadar. Britannia's continues, although sometime back Romin Kohinoor, the guy who runs it, made my blood run by saying that he was sick of running the place and wanted to turn it into... oh horrors... a business centre. (Though this would arguably be better than the fate that has fallen on Wayside Inn which is now a totally undistinguished generic East Asian food restaurant. I weep everytime I pass it).

Still Romin's father, who also runs Bastani's, seems to have put his foot down, so for now Britannia's continues (lunch only) as good as ever. Their speciality is Iranian berry pulao, made with small sour zaresth berries which they import from Iran. This is really excellent -spicy chicken curry, with big meaty pieces, under a mound of yellow rice and the berries adding a refreshingly different note. Most of their other food is pretty good too - the chicken special, dhansak, sali boti, and they also make what I think is the best caramel custard in Bombay.

When people want to eat Parsi food I tend to take them to Jimmy Boy's since its open for dinner and you can get a mini version of the full lagan nu bhonu down to the guy coming with the silver ewer and pouring water to wash your hands. You also get a wider range of traditional Parsi dishes. But Britannia's is also very good.

Vikram

[howler]

man, the wayside inn ... ohhhh what memories. i remember going in the very first time because i was completely sick of eating at copper chimney yet again .... the wayside is gone?!

we are poorer.

and as an aside, isn't it sacrilege to eat lagan nu bhonu anywhere but inside the walls of your favourite agiary? (grin) actually, i miss laganu custard the most out of the whole menu. does jimmy boy's give you bida per ida and stuff like that?

and where are you scoring patties these days? i LOVE patties ... and frankies, are the frankies still good? with the chopoped chillies aaaargh