Category — Restaurant News & Reviews

by Kanko

If the Mumbai daily DNA is to be believed (and why not? It’s got absolutely ALL the gossip about Bollywood celebrities!) it’s goodbye tiffin, hello take out! “Menu is always such a problem,” my husband’s cousin Anju once told me as she described getting up each day at 5am to fill her husband’s stainless steel dabba – lunch pail — with a selection of poli, bhaji, curry and other hot, homemade food without being repetitive.   Now fashionable Mumbaikers can enjoy a Japanese-style Bento box of rice, protein and vegetables (and a Kingfisher beer!) or a “China Box” filled with chicken teriyaki or tofu long rice. Inspired by the Chinese food boxes he saw in American movies as a child, Chef Ristic Milos hopes to offer “a nice small meal that is easy to handle, one you can eat alone without having to sit at a table.” Read: one you can scarf down without leaving your desk. I’m all for freeing Anju from having to get up at 5am to fill her husband’s lunchbox. And for treating yourself occasionally to a fun, take out lunch. But I hope it doesn’t mean India’s also importing the take out culture — of eating at your desk, alone, without your colleagues, of looking on food not as social, but as fuel. A disturbing hint of things to come? “The meal contains everything you need to power you through the rest of the day,” the Milos tells DNA’s reporter.

A kitchen’s mise en place gives away what it thinks it’s doing. Peter Merriman, one of the founders of what’s called Hawaii Regional Cuisine, once told me about the ribbing he took from Mainland chefs over the ginger, garlic, chilis and lemongrass on his. These were the flavors that expressed Hawaii and all the cultures that had influenced its food. But the rubes from the Continental 48 just didn’t get it.
Ditto for the mise en place at India and Beyond, the new Mumbai outpost of my husband’s cousin, restaurateur Rahul Limaye. The restaurant’s ambition to merge Western and Indian cuisine couldn’t be told any more clearly than by the gulab jamun in the bain-marie or the mise en place stocked with chaat masala, turmeric, ground fenugreek and chili powder. So much fun to take this little tour — check it out.

Check out that naan. Watch the way the naan walla rocks back and forth with the skewers, romancing the bread, forward and back as he loosens it from the side. I love the way the dough just becomes a disc as he slaps it around and then the way he pats it onto the side of the tandoor with that funky potholder, like a giant, red-checkered eraser. And look at him — he almost smiles. We made him mess up.

Shot this while invading the kitchen at India and Beyond, a new Mumbai restaurant owned by my husband’s cousin, Rahul Limaye. Stay tuned for more India videos very soon.