I’m still alive. I’ve been exhausted and out of it and also more than a little bit under the weather since I got back from Delhi in the middle of last week. I didn’t end up having the energy to write up the promised weekend restaurant report from New Jersey; and, thanks to some major nasal congestion, did not have the wherewithal to take notes for the usual Monday booze review*. Now that I’m feeling better, here’s a desperate attempt to get the Tuesday report from Bombay out before the day comes to an end. I’ll try to catch up with the New Jersey report before the end of the week—the booze will have to wait till next week (having hit my liver with a lot of high-strength acetaminophen/paracetamol over the weekend, I’m still not drinking).

So, we’re back to Bombay and, after a Gujarati and vegetarian hiatus at Swati Snacks, we’re back to eating seafood from the Konkan coast. We’re also back to another of my favourite Bombay restaurants, Highway Gomantak, where I’ve eaten on every trip since my friend Vikram D. took me there for dinner in 2018. In January 2024, I actually took my entire program (plus my family) there for lunch on a Sunday. Despite road closures for the Bombay marathon, we had just about made it to Bandra that morning for a culture walk and after it ended, I’d decided to keep us all in Bandra till the marathon was done. About 25 of us had taken up most of Highway Gomantak’s inner dining room on that occasion, and everyone ate thalis till they burst. On this occasion, I was there with students again, but it was on a weekday and it was just a table of five (me plus four of them).

We once again kept the meal centered on thalis. But we started—as is only proper—with shared orders of kolambi/prawn fry and bombil/Bombay duck fry. Both were quite good but I have to say not quite as good as on my previous visits. The thalis, however, did not disappoint. We actually got the thalis to share as well. As the seafood thalis—as at almost every seafood restaurant in the city—barely have any vegetarian things on them, I ordered two veg thalis for us all to share. And we also got three of their special seafood thalis to go with them. One with fried surmai (king mackerel), one with fried mandeli (golden anchovy), and one with fried rawas (Indian “salmon”). The three seafood thalis also had a small bowl of crab curry on them along with larger servings of fish rassa and a few other things. For the breads we got two thalis with chapatis, two with rice bhakris and one with wade. The crab curry and the rassas (two different kinds depending on the fish) were rather good and the fried fish were all outstanding.

Yes, I got solkadi to start (the students got fresh lime sodas). And since none of these young Americans developed a taste for solkadi over their time in Bombay, I also got to have all the bowls of solkadi on the thalis proper. Yay, me.

For a look at the restaurant and everything we ate, launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see how much it all cost and to see what’s coming next.

Service was friendly and present (and very tolerant of one member of our party who was going through the restaurants store of tiny paper napkins at a rather alarming rate). Cost? Rs. 3800 before tip, which is just about $40 at the current exchange rate. That’s $8/head for rather a lot of seafood (including crab). They still don’t take non-Indian credit cards so if you don’t have access to UPI payment you’ll need to make sure to have cash.

We’d got there on the early side, by the way, and hadn’t had to wait. By the time we left, the place was full and there was a queue outside. This was on a Wednesday. Well, it’s not hard to see why—even if I felt a few things had slipped since my last visit. I’ll be back again on my next trip (probably in 2028).

Alright, I hope to get the week’s scheduled Twin Cities report up tomorrow. That’ll probably go up in the evening. Let’s see how it goes.

*And also forgot, yet again, to kick my morbid whisky will post ahead a few months. Don’t get excited if you saw that your name appeared in it—I’ve been planning to write you out of it for a while.