Friday, September 18, 2009

The "Other Gastronomic Adventures" from the previous post

Well, after that 6000 rupee butter chicken, Ajay asked me if I had ever sampled the wares at Muhammad Ali road and thereabouts, at Ramzan time.

What with all these world events happening, it so happened that I had not. I said so. Ajay immediately raised eyebrows and gave me the "what stone have you been living under, my friend" look. I squirmed under his critical gaze and implored him to remedy that defect in my otherwise blemishless character.

"Alright", he told me, "present yourself at Kala Ghoda at 6 pm tomorrow. I'll see what I can do."

Kala Ghoda, for those of you who are ignorant of Mumbai geography, is an important city landmark named after a black horse (kala ghoda) which does not exist.

I know this for a fact. I have searched high and low for it, often when I was perfectly sober, and found no evidence of horses of any color.

And the search was never easy, let me tell you. Can you imagine walking around in broad daylight, or worse, dark night light, trying to look nonchalant while actually seeking out a large black horse among automobiles, office goers and random municipal corporation teams digging up the road in the hope of finding buried treasure?

Which by the way is a confirmed fact, the fact that they're hunting for buried treasure, I mean, because another fine thinker  (who blogs  here)   arrived at the same conclusion independently, as we both discovered recently while having a philosophical beer, proving that it MUSt be true. And what the devil am I rambling about here? Get back to the point. Right. Sorry folks.

The other important thing about Kala Ghoda is that it lies 35 traffic filled kilometers south of Malad West where yours truly resides. I decided to take the train. Now local train journeys are something I really look forward to, in Mumbai, for the simple reason that nowhere else in the world can you find so many people digging out little bits of snot, rolling them into balls of nanometric dimensions and sticking them under the seat or on the dangling handles overhead, with such dexterity and precision. It's hypnotic. I did not join them. I wanted to, really did, but when Yo Yo Ma plays the cello, you listen, however much your own fingers are twitching to play, if you get my drift.

By the way, if this post lacks the usual precise, compact, power-point-presentation-to-the-board-of-directors quality of my arguments, you can blame it on a rather jolly little beer called Tuborg which is so named because if have tu many of them, and you happen to be with Bjorn Borg, you are liable to see tu borgs. There. I've gone off the rails again! At this rate, I really doubt if I will ever get to the point where I tell you about what I ate at the Mohammed Ali joint.

So here goes, before I fall asleep.
1. Tandoori Chicken
2. Paya barahandi
3. Khichda
4. Firnee
5. Malpua with cream.

All of which were made from low calorie ingredients, of course, and had special cholestrol lowering vitamins added to them.

(It might have occured to the alert reader that I could have said this right at the beginning and saved myself the trouble of typing a few thousand words. Hmmm. True. But it's such fun to ramble on pointlessly. Also, my MBA training requires me to use a thousand random words for every little thought or else they will formally strip me of my degree)

18 comments:

Bea Walker said...

I thought one saw elephants of the pink kind, one borg or tuborgs :)....and hai hai only you would mention nanometric snot bits and Yo Yo Ma in the same breath, LMAO...

Gradwolf said...

Not sure how good they are, but this season you get similar stuff right opposite Andheri station West, on S.V Road. Am veg, so found it difficult to stand while walking towards my IIT classes!

Try it, you can save the 35 km journey!

Anonymous said...

the name malpua sounds suspiciously like something you'd find under the train seat....

wonder what the entire ordeal at the good musalmaan's joint cost you? under less than a 100 bucks, makes the entire celebrity chicken feel like it should travel in cattle class point forward...

Aravind said...

If you consider yourself a Gastronome then you should better have Haleem, a bowl of sticky goo with awesomeness of slow cooked mutton, dal, wheat and life-giving spices which burn twice. Only available in Hyderabad.

Siddharth said...

Exotic outdoor travelling! I suggest travelling at 9 am in the local to get an additional massage as well.

If you travel first class, then try asking for a fourth seat and you will get the same stare that Caesar gave to Brutus before asking "Et tu..."

Anonymous said...

Just for fun, because it is an important landmark, the Kala Ghoda is at Byculla. Kala Ghoda, however, is at Kala Ghoda.

Soapy, who much prefers Kingfisher

nonsenseblog said...

Wow from 6000 bucks a plate butter chicken to 6000 bucks for a fortnight Mohammed Ali Road stuff.
You give competition to a Yo Yo.
I must say Tuborg does stuff to you

Rofl Indian said...

Is Tuborg an abbreviation of Tube-orgy?

Nanometric balls of snot? Come to think of it, each Mumbai local train coach contains billions of DNA strands of great ethnic, racial and cultural diversity. All you need to do is to hurl a coach sufficiently high in space to kickstart life on Mars!

Paya barahandi sounds fiercely exotic.

mentalie said...

all this time i wondered what the nanometric balls were...oh dear, oh dear! chee, chee! shiva, shiva. like a good tam brahm i will go bathe now.

:D

Maddy said...

some of those places serve the best food - i still remember the muslim hotel in Crawford market - just cant get the name though - what fabulous food it was and next door was the falooda place!!

sFunn.com said...

veggie me too.
neways, nice one.

---
The Fun place.

Juggler said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Juggler said...

Congratulations on ingesting, digesting and burping out the costliest butter chicken in the world! You should have trapped the gases in an airtight container for posterity *chuckle*

About the Kala Ghoda- I searched too, all of last summer, every time I made my way out of and into my hotel, sober and not. Finally my misery has found some well deserved company :-)

Spaz Kumari said...

sometimes i wonder if it is a terrible mistake to be vegetarian.

also, i loooooOoOoVE good malpua. LOVE from the bottom of my stomach.

very much jealousy is coming :(

Unknown said...

I visit this space after such a long time in the middle of the night, dying of hunger pangs and nothing but healthy-kind-of-food in the fridge and I read this post. *Sigh*. Life is cruel.
About Kala Ghoda - I've always wanted to visit this place but if there is no black horse, I don't see any point now. Do you reckon it was stolen by the treasure hunting MC workers?

Bhel Puri & Seekh Kabab said...

LOL, first time I have read a restaurant review where the food critic spends 5 lines on the food, but 500 on the how he got there. This version was way more funnier. Please, more of the same!

Pitu said...

Being veggie, all I ever get to pig out on is malpuas. And I don't even like sweet thingies! Oh, well. Maddy, are you talking about Baadshah's? Oh, that's the best!! What sandwiches! And what rose faloodas to wash them down! I really am going to give this blog a miss while I am on my diet :-p it's making me want to gorge.

Deepak Gopalakrishnan said...

Good post.

(submits)

(dammit, where did that diploma go?)