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The Bombay food resistance

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Gayatri Jayaraman
Gayatri JayaramanMar 03, 2015 | 19:27

The Bombay food resistance

My 13-year old son, whom I took along for a dinner treat to celebrate the end of his eighth standard and the advent of the soul-crushing ninth, described it as: "food that turns something on in you". To be above board, he also wants to take them up on their offer of an internship at The Bombay Canteen during his summer vacations, and we paid for our personal meal. As much as the food enthralled us, and you can tell it has, what moved us was the idea that two young restaurateurs who spent much of their adult lives witnessing the emergence of Mumbai rather than Bombay, were pushed to think about their food intelligently and with as much love and affection as only the Bombayite can. I personally mark their effort as the peaking of the Bombay food resistance: a return via food to the things that built this city.

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I will go out on a limb here and call the duo, Delhi native Sameer Seth, Punekar Yash Bhanage, mentored by New Yorker Floyd Cardoz and its kitchens helmed by Thomas Zacharias, the most exciting Bombay culinary debut since Rahul Akerkar of Indigo. They bring Bombay back on several levels. We are a confusing city: our modern progressive merges with colonial past, and our casual chic in ways that Delhiites choke on. The team achieves this with the part Irani, part Parsi stained glass and wood interiors that stir memories of being able to walk into a neighbourhood corner tea store with a few Rupees to order bun maska and chai or an individually wrapped strawberry wafer in your shorts and chappals. It's the air of casual dining, familiarity with waiters in half aprons, dishes and homely plates, the sugarcane juice tall glasses every Bombayite knows the measure of in half or in full, and empty Roohafza bottles that once lined our fridges refilled with water that we always confused with the vinegar, that lock in Bombay childhoods into them. Almost like an art installation, the Malad-stone recreates an old Bombay look, which is mish-mashed to a purpose: it’s hit so many chords by the time you’ve sat down, you want to hug the waiter and ask him to summon your now deceased uncle from the gymkhana.

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You cannot underestimate the pull of that for those of us who grew up in the quintessential community neighbourhoods that have now been taken over by rapid development. Matunga, Hindu Colony, Parsi Colony, Shivaji Park, Guju Parle and filmstar Juhu; Yash himself is from the old world Marathi intellectual hub of Kalanagar, a world apart from Bandra Boy Cardoz's home gullies smelling of bottle masala and pickled papaya. It's the call of a city we, to appropriate Faiz Ahmed Faiz, who have reached the age when one visits the heart only as a courtesy, fear we will forget all too soon. It brings back the advertisements of Femina and Women's Era, that now adorn TBC menus, thanks to an aunt of Thomas' who stocks bound volumes.

But you can only feed off nostalgia up to a point. Eventually our collective hunger is for progress. And Mumbai, more than any city in India, is the vanguard. Intelligently enough, what Zacharias, Seth, Bhanage and Cardoz achieve, is that simultaneous regression and progression that is uniquely Bombay. They leave the moving backwards in time to the physicality of the space while taking the food forward.

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And so you have food that crosses the boundaries, but is rooted in Bombay by being sourced here. You have the mind blowing tingmo bun, a curly cross between a Malabar paratha and a roomali roti but too pao-y to be either, which Zacharias picked up while living and researching in the villages of the North East, filled with just a smattering of fiery Maharashtrian thecha, the red garlic-chilli chutney so familiar to the Bombay palate. The combination has the power to offset and alter the composition of the curry it is eaten with. The sting-ray, discarded by local fishermen off the boats at Sassoon Docks, makes its way to the menu here, as do the Kailash-Parbat indoctrinated lotus roots and Shivaji Park mandated Malvan Katta's mandeli fry and the Swati Snack's inspired multi-grain khichdi. None of these are lifts, but rather passing nods to the city's old favourites. I actually searched for Chicken Sanju Baba on the menu. Between Cardoz's uncle's mutton fry with coconut, and the Tamil kothu roti, there is enough, whichever part of Bombay you have belonged to and grown up with, to feel at home. The bourbon ice-cream sandwiches that evoke a sense of Rustom's at Churchgate and that hold a uniquely hand churned Bombay flavour; not quite kulfi not quite processed. There is also the signature Panch, aka Punch, the fruit and alcohol concoction with a tea base, which Seth discovered was Bombay-in-origin while tending a bar in New York. And drinks like the Masala Coke, the fusion of the kalakhatta with the world's favourite soda, which seems a no-brainer when you think of it - except that's the thing. No one has quite thought of it.

More than anything, that is the lingering sense that The Bombay Canteen leaves you with: That here are a bunch of people who are thinking about their food, their city, what they stand for and where they want to go. And in as much as Bombay was about making a living and selling pretty much anything like hot cakes, it was also about that unique Bombay spirit. That who we are and what we mean, that everyone who remembers it is holding on to for dear life. I still think my son said it best; "it's food that switches something on in you". That, which it switches on, my son, that's Bombay.

Last updated: March 03, 2015 | 19:27
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