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). Continue reading
Tag Archives: Konkani Cuisine
Maaslli I & II (Bombay, March 2026)
The first thing I did after settling into my flat in Bombay in late March was fire up Google Maps to see if there were any interesting restaurants within easy walking range. It turned out there were very few. One, however, caught my eye: Maaslli. I looked it up and discovered that it is a seafood restaurant specializing in the food of the GSB (Gaud Saraswat Brahmin) community—yes, in India even restaurants have caste-specific identities. And all the reviews I read of it were raves. And what’s more, of the two locations the one within 15 minutes walk of me was the original. And so that is where I ate dinner on my first night in Bombay on this trip. And it was such a fantastic meal that I went back there for dinner again a couple of nights later. And then for two lunches later in the trip. Here first is an account of the first two meals—I’ll post a report on the two lunches in a few weeks. Continue reading
Highway Gomantak (Bombay, December 2018)
This was actually the last proper meal I ate in Bombay on this trip but I am writing it up out of order now as I am a little pressed for time and it involves resizing fewer pictures than all my remaining Bombay meals.
If you’re unfamiliar with the Bombay food scene—as I imagine most of my readers are—the name of this restaurant is probably a big mystery to you. It is actually very simple: the restaurant serves Gomantak food—a subset of Goan/Konkani food—and this is a branch of the original Gomantak restaurant that is located by a highway in Bandra. Thus Highway Gomantak: mystery solved. As with many restaurants in this genre in Bombay, it is an unassuming restaurant that serves Goan food of a kind completely unknown in North India, leave alone in the US. This is not the Goa of vindaloos and sorpotels but of fish curries and rava (semolina)-crusted fried fish and shellfish. All these restaurants serve an array of seafood dishes that are basically iterations of a few preparations with a range of fish and shellfish. Add some thalis and some side dishes and that’s your menu. As with many restaurants in the genre, the price is on the low side and the quality is on the high side. Continue reading
Jai Hind Lunch Home (Bombay, December 2018)
The food of the southwestern coast of India is something I had almost no sense of when I was growing up in India. I grew up all over India but, other than brief visits to Goa, never went further south than Hyderabad; and as an adult I didn’t spend much time in Bombay till after I’d left India for the US. It wasn’t until I ate at Swagath in Delhi in the early 2000s that I realized just how different the cuisine of coastal Karnataka, particularly Mangalore, and of the adjoining Konkan coast is from the South Indian cuisines I was more familiar with. And I just loved it. But as good as Swagath was in its heyday, its food cannot compare to what is available in Bombay—which makes sense as the cuisine is both seafood-heavy and because Bombay, due to proximity, is chock-full of people from those parts of the country. As a result, whenever I am in Bombay I try to eat at at least one restaurant that specializes in Mangalorean/Konkani/Malvani cuisines. On this trip Jai Hind Lunch Home was my first such stop. Continue reading