Okay, let’s get the Delhi reports underway. I was/am in Delhi by myself for this short trip (when this posts, I will be 12 hours from departure) and so the eating out situation was very different from when the missus and the boys are here with me. Thankfully, in India it is very easy for a single diner to eat a well-rounded meal and that’s because our ancestors were wise enough to invent the OG tasting menu: the thali. Almost all my meals out involved thalis. Indeed, even a couple of the meals I ate with other people involved thalis. This lunch, eaten at an Arunachali restaurant in Humayunpur, was one such. I was joined by an old friend who was coincidentally in town from Bombay to speak at a queer lit fest. It was the first Arunachali meal for both of us. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Indian Food
Dosa Point (Menlo Park, June 2024)
Here is the last of my reports from our side-trip to Northern California in June. As you may recall, we drove up to San Francisco from Los Angeles. On the way up we spent two nights on the central coast (I had reports on Mexican meals in Santa Barbara and Morro Bay). After a few days in San Francisco (meal reports here, here, here, here, here and here), we drove down to Menlo Park for a couple of days. We stayed with old, dear friends from my college days in India. We mostly ate at home with the exception of one lunch eaten after a long hike among the redwoods in Wunderlich Park in Woodside. We were hungry and stopped on the way back at a South Indian place a hop, skip and jump from their place: Dosa Point. Here’s a quick report. Continue reading
Godavari, Summer 2024 (Eden Prairie, MN)
It appears that it has been more than a year since I last reported on an Indian or other South Asian restaurant meal in the Twin Cities. And that was a review of lunch at Pizza Karma in Apple Valley—not exactly the kind of thing most people think of when they think of Indian food. What can I say? We don’t go out to eat Indian food in the Twin Cities very much more than we go out to eat Korean food. Given how much I cook at home, it’s just not a priority, even though—as I have noted on many occasions in the past—the Indian food scene in the metro has improved dramatically in the last 5-6 years as more South Indian restaurants have opened to feed the new population of South Indian immigrants in the area. Anyway, let’s address my neglect of my people’s restaurants with a look at a couple of lunches eaten this summer at the place that has topped my previous rankings of Indian/South Asian restaurants in the Twin Cities metro: Godavari. Continue reading
Dosa Grill (North Brunswick, New Jersey)
Alright, let’s get back to New Jersey. As you may recall, I made a quick trip to New Jersey and New York in mid-May. My meals out included three Indian meals and one that was not Indian. This is not a report on the non-Indian one; it’s a report on the last of the three Indian meals (see here for my report on dinner at Bombay Bistro in the West Village, and here for my report on lunch at Pakvaan Desi Spice in Edison). I ate it with a dear old friend and his family (and visiting relatives). The original plan had been to eat at a Pakistani restaurant. However, I was going to be cooking a big Bengali meal for them all that night—with mutton and fish on the menu—and so we decided to keep lunch vegetarian. Accordingly, we ended at a restaurant named Dosa Grill in North Brunswick. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Pakvaan Desi Spice (Edison, New Jersey)
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
Bombay Bistro (New York, May 2024)
I still have five or so reports from Seoul/Busan to come. But before I get to the next of those, here’s the first report from my recent short trip to New Jersey/New York in mid-May. I was there for just a few nights. I had a packed schedule but managed to see friends for meals on each day. The first of those was dinner in New York City a few hours after arrival. I met an old high school friend at an Indian restaurant in the West Village. I had wanted to try one of the city’s better Indian restaurants. We’d originally hoped to eat at Dhamaka but they seemed to be closed for a private event—at any rate not a single table was available all evening. As we batted around options, location and timing became the chief constraints. Which is how we ended up at Bombay Bistro on Cornelia St., a restaurant I’d never previously heard of and he’d never been to, and which, as far as I could tell from their website, was a regulation curry house—a genre of Indian restaurant in the US that I am usually not interested in. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Matamaal II (Gurgaon, March 2024)
One of our favourite meals out during our trip to Delhi in January, 2023 was at Matamaal, the Kashmiri restaurant that opened a few years ago at the City Court mall in Gurgaon. Actually, that’s wrong: two of our favourite meals out on that trip were eaten at Matamaal. We liked the first meal so much that we went back again. In my review of both I noted that we’d be back for sure on our next trip and that this time we’d bring our boys with us. And so it came to pass last month. On our last day in Delhi we went to Matamaal for lunch. And it was another fine meal, and a highlight of our eating out on this trip as well. Here are the details. Continue reading
Anardana (Gurgaon, March 2024)
Back to Delhi. Well, I should say clarify here—many years after beginning to review Delhi restaurants—that I use “Delhi” somewhat loosely as a place-name in my restaurant reviews. When I say “Delhi” I mean restaurants in Delhi, Noida and Gurgaon—in other words, in the NCR or National Capital Region. Today’s review, of the first meal we ate out on our recent short trip to Delhi, was eaten at a branch of Anardana. They do have branches in Delhi proper—and beyond—but we ate lunch with friends at the branch on the ground floor of the very shiny International Finance Center in Gurgaon. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Mizo Diner (Delhi, March 2024)
My Bombay food reports are done—see here for last week’s street/casual food round-up—but I still have quite a few to go from the subsequent five weeks we spent in Seoul. From Seoul we then went to Delhi for 12 days before returning to Minnesota this Wednesday. We didn’t eat out so very much in Delhi but I’m going to intersperse reports of those meals among the Seoul ones. First up, is a report on a lunch we ate at Mizo Diner in Humayunpur. In the unlikely event that you’ve been tracking my Delhi reports over the years, you’ll know that the North Eastern restaurant hub in Humayunpur in South Delhi has become one of my absolute favourite places to eat at in Delhi. Indeed, I don’t think there’s anywhere else in the city with such concentrated quality, regardless of cuisine. Our lunch at Mizo Diner only confirmed this view. I would go so far as to say that it might be the best of the meals we’ve eaten in Humayunpur, which is to say, it was very good indeed. It was also my favourite of our meals out on this Delhi trip, and the other places we ate at included some of our very favourite restaurants in the city. Here are the details. Continue reading
Some Casual/Street Food (Bombay, Jan-Feb 2024)
Here, finally, is my last food report from our time in Bombay from early January through the first third of February. It’s the only one of my eating-centered reports that is not an account of a single meal or multiple meals eaten at the same restaurant. Instead, this is a compendium of several far more casual meals eaten on the go over the course of our time there. It’s a mix of experiences: quick bites eaten on the street, things eaten as part of food tours, things eaten quickly at casual restaurants. A few of these things were among the best things I ate in the city, but almost all speak to an experience of eating in a city like Bombay that cannot be encapsulated in regular restaurant reviews but which is quite central to not just the story of food in Bombay but to the city’s larger cultural makeup. Continue reading
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
Mahesh Lunch Home (Bombay, January 2024)
We’ve been in Seoul for just about a week now but the blog is still in Bombay, food-wise. Things got very hectic there towards the end of our five weeks in the city and I’m now two weeks behind with my restaurant reports. When last seen, I was writing up lunch at Chaitanya, a seafood restaurant. Today I have for you a quick report on lunch at another seafood restaurant. But whereas Chaitanya is a Malvani restaurant, today’s review is of a Mangalorean restaurant and one of Bombay’s most famous ones at that: Mahesh Lunch Home. We celebrated the older boy’s 15th birthday at the mothership in Fort. Herewith the details. Continue reading
Chaitanya (Bombay, January 2024)
Alright, let’s keep cranking the Bombay restaurant reports out. Here is another lunch eaten at one of the city’s stalwart Malvani restaurants: Chaitanya. You might remember that my second report from this trip was of a very good lunch at Shri Datta Boarding in Lalbaug. Well, not that there’s a competition but I would say that this lunch at Chaitanya was even better. I took a subset of my students there after a morning outing a few weeks ago and between us we tried a large number of their seafood thalis and also a veg thali. There wasn’t a single less than deeply-satisfied customer in the bunch. Herewith the details. Continue reading
An East Indian Feast in Uttan (Bombay, January 2024)
A very quick report today on what has been one of my favourite meals so far in Bombay: a feast at an East Indian home in Uttan, in the north of the city. This was part of another of the food outings curated for my program by my friend, Rushina Munshaw Ghildiyal. The morning saw us make an early start by bust in the direction of Malad. There we took a very short ferry ride across the water to Dharavi Island (not the same as the more famous Dharavi, adjacent to Mahim), and then a longer, rattling auto-rickshaw ride to the East Indian village of Uttan (I squeezed onto the driver’s seat of the auto our family was in, and it was fun for about the first five minutes—I hadn’t realized it was going to be a near-20 minute ride). On arrival in Uttan we were met by our host Mogan Rodrigues at his family’s home. There Mogan introduced us to the history and present of the East Indian community and then we ate the massive meal they had prepared for us. Continue reading
Highway Gomantak II (Bombay, January 2024)
Not that there was a bad one in the bunch but one of my favourite meals on my last visit to Bombay, back in December 2018, was at Highway Gomantak in Bandra East. I ate there then in the company of the food writer and old food forum friend, Vikram Doctor. I knew I was going to go back there for sure with the family on this trip. As it happens, I went back with the family and 21 of my students (one was out with a bad cold)! We’d had quite a trying day so far. We had a culture walk around Bandra West scheduled from 9 am to 11 am and the plan had been that the students would return to their housing in the coach while we peeled off for lunch on our own. But the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley, especially when the fucking Bombay Marathon turns out to be scheduled on the day of an outing… Continue reading
A Lagan nu Bhonu at the Ratan Tata Institute (Bombay, January 2024)
As I think I’ve mentioned before, the program I’m leading in Bombay is kicking my ass. We’ve been on the go pretty much every day and most evenings are taken up with checking and double-checking all the upcoming reservations. Not to mention, try corralling 22 undergraduates and you’ll beg to be allowed to herd cats. Actually, I kid. The students have been very game, very easy to deal with. But between all the activities and the fish market shopping and the cooking and the eating, I’ve not had much time to post detailed write-ups on the blog. Now, however, I’m at risk of falling behind quite severely with the dining out reports and so here’s a quick look at one of the highlights of our second week in the city: a Parsi wedding feast (or lagan nu bhonu). And none of us even had to get married to get the feast. Indeed, we skipped the wedding part altogether and went straight to the feast. Continue reading
Delux Kerala (Bombay, January 2024)
We’ve eaten some very good food in Bombay in the last couple of weeks. A lot of it has been food people not from Bombay associate classically with the city: Malvani food, Parsi food, Gujarati food, Marathi food—and, as of yesterday, even an outstanding East Indian meal. Some of our best meals, however, have featured Malayali food, or the food of Kerala. Specifically, food from Delux Kerala in Fort. This is a small restaurant split across two levels: a small un-air-conditioned dining room on the ground floor and a small air-conditioned dining room on the first floor. Our first couple of meals of their food did not involve either floor: we got delivery via Zomato. It’s not a very long hop from the restaurant to where we’re putting up and we enjoyed both sets of delivery quite a bit. But eating in at the restaurant was a must. This because they do a sadhya or banana leaf meal that obviously can’t be ordered for delivery. On Sundays this has some extra items added on to it. I am happy to tell you that when we finally got there in person it was on a Sunday. Here is a look at that meal, and also at the two delivery orders. Continue reading