I’ve reported on a number of Bombay’s premier Malvani and other coastal/seafood restaurants before: Chaitanya, Shri Datta Boarding House, Jai Hind Lunch Home, Highway Gomantak, Mahesh Lunch Home. I am very happy to now add to that list the name of one of the most esteemed of all these restaurants: Gajalee. I’d hoped to eat there much earlier on our trip than we did—the only reason for the delay is that we were based in Colaba and all the branches of Gajalee are further north in the city. And if there’s one thing you don’t want to do after having been Bombay for a few weeks it’s to sit in more traffic than you strictly have to. But when a lunch to thank someone who had helped out with the program in a big way took us all the way to Andheri, Gajalee was an easy call. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Malvani Cuisine
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
Shri Datta Boarding House (Bombay, January 2024)
I’m in danger of falling way behind on my Bombay food reports. Those of you who follow me on Instagram are aware of most of my food-related activity: from fish markets to takeout to restaurants to street food. On the blog, however, I’ve only posted a report on our lunch at Soam more than a week ago. This is because the program I’m leading here has kept me insanely busy. This is all my own fault as I’ve over-scheduled us more than a little; it’s all been fun and interesting but the pace has also been intense. The program activities themselves, unsurprisingly, involve food. Here now is a brief look at the second meal we ate out together, just a few days after our welcome lunch at Soam. It features one of the cuisines I most love eating when in Bombay: Malvani. 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