Here is my second restaurant report from my short trip to New Jersey/New York in mid-May. I ate four meals out with friends. Three of these were at Indian restaurants. I’ve already written up dinner at Bombay Bistro in the West Village. That was an old-school North Indian curry house meal. My two other Indian restaurant meals were eaten in New Jersey. Neither were North Indian and both were quite a bit cheaper than the Bombay Bistro dinner. The first of these was lunch at Pakvaan Desi Spice, a Gujarati restaurant in a strip mall in Edison. I met another old friend for lunch there. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Gujarati Cuisine
Swati Snacks 2 (Bombay, January 2024)
Okay let’s take a break from seafood restaurants. The weekend’s second Bombay food report (see here for yesterday’s report on Mangalorean seafood lunch in Fort) is of an entirely vegetarian restaurant, the venerable Swati Snacks. I have eaten at their Tardeo mothership on every single trip I’ve made to Bombay as an adult (since 2005) and there was no way I was not going back with the family. The only shocker is that we made only one visit. The main reasons for this are 1) that on account of my regular visits to the fish market in our neighbourhood we were cooking at home a lot; and 2) since we were eating a fair number of meals out every week as part of the program, we didn’t end up eating out so very much more on our own—and so didn’t end up making repeat visits anywhere as a family. This lunch, at any rate, was very good. Continue reading
Soam II (Bombay, January 2024)
We’ve been in Bombay for 10 days now. It’s been a hectic week and a half. First we were getting set up at our flat, figuring out where to do all our shopping and so forth. And then my students arrived last Sunday and we plunged into a breakneck pace of outings and activities. First up, last Monday was our welcome lunch, at the iconic Gujarati restaurant, Soam in Babulnath. The last time I ate at Soam—back in December 2018—was when I was last in Bombay, doing prep work for this trip. I ate there then in the company of my old friend Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal. Rushina, who is a bit of a big wheel in the Indian food world, is curating our food/community-centered explorations while we’re here in Bombay, and she suggested that we kick things off at Soam. I was very quick to agree. Continue reading
Kathiyawadi Kitchen (Sayreville, New Jersey)
I was recently in New York and New Jersey for a few days. I was there primarily for a few academic events connected to South Asian cinema, but also took the opportunity to meet up with some old friends. As half my commitments were in the New Brunswick area, I stayed in a hotel across the street from Newark Penn Station. I took the New Jersey transit train down to New Brunswick on both days in the mornings and then took it back up to New York Penn in the early evenings for my events/meetings there. My lunches therefore were in the vicinity of New Brunswick, and my dinners were in Manhattan. Now, of course, I was looking forward to eating a couple of good meals in New York, but, truth be told, I was more excited about the lunches in New Jersey. This because the friends I was eating with had picked out Indian restaurants for us to go eat thalis in. Here’s an account of that first meal, at Kathiyawadi Kitchen in Sayreville. Spoiler alert: It was rather excellent! And I say this as a confirmed carnivore even though it’s a vegetarian restaurant. Continue reading
Soam (Bombay, December 2018)
Okay, I’m back in Bombay and back at another iconic Gujarati vegetarian restaurant, and depending on who you talk to, perhaps the iconic Gujarati restaurant in the city. Soam opened about a decade and a half ago and quickly established itself as the main challenger to Swati Snacks‘ crown as the purveyor of the finest Gujarati food, traditional and contemporary. My Bombay friends—those who live there and those who visit often—are pretty evenly divided. Some say Soam, with its larger menu and size and its less spartan aesthetic, is the clear front-runner; others acknowledge that Soam is good but wonder why anyone would ever go there over Swati Snacks. As one who is not from Bombay, knows little about Gujarati food, and has not eaten enough at both restaurants (three times at Swati Snacks, just this one time at Soam), I am not qualified to have an opinion. I can, however, tell you what my lunch there on this trip was like. Continue reading
Swati Snacks (Bombay, December 2018)
Delhi has probably overtaken Bombay as the premier food city in India* but there are a number of cuisines for which Bombay is rather obviously superior. Malvani, Mangalorean and Parsi are three of these cuisines and Gujarati is another. And if you are in the city the very best place perhaps to eat Gujarati food is the venerable Swati Snacks in Tardeo. A Bombay institution that first opened in 1963, Swati Snacks is the kind of place where you can get a handle on how difficult it is to talk glibly about “traditional” food in the Indian and especially in the Gujarati context. Culture does not stand still and there’s no tastier way to confirm this truism than by taking the measure of the menu at Swati Snacks where thalipith with pitla can be had alongside bajri paneer pizza. A meal at Swati Snacks is a must for every first-time visitor to Bombay. Me, I go on every visit to the city. Continue reading