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
Tag Archives: Parsi
Rustom’s Parsi Bhonu (Delhi, January 2016)
Once upon a time Delhi had no Parsi restaurants (that I knew of or anyone talked about, at any rate), now we ate at two of them in the course of three days. The first was Sodabottleopenerwala, a meal, you may recall, I was unenthused by; the second was Rustom’s Parsi Bhonu. This was a much better meal in every way. Now, I should reiterate that I am in now way an authority on Parsi cuisine. I’ve eaten at a couple of Parsi/Irani places in Bombay and at the homes of friends but none of this has added up to a basis on which to opine in any confident way on the “authenticity” of the food served at these places. I do have some sense though of when food is made well, and the food at Rustom’s was superior, the distinction most marked in the dishes we ate at both meals. Continue reading
Sodabottleopenerwala (Gurgaon, January 2016)
Sodabottleopenerwala, which opened two years ago in Gurgaon and has since expanded to other locations in Delhi and elsewhere, may well have been named MaximumParsiSignifiers. Irani restaurant as theme park, it represents a weird yet representative moment in the packaging of regional cuisines for hyper-consumerist India in the early 21st century. Unpacking all of this properly is beyond the scope of a quick meal report written on the fly but I’ll give it a truncated shot.
First up, a little recommended reading for those who don’t know their Parsi from their Paris (all from Another Subcontinent): start with this brief essay by the late, great Sue Darlow that sketches the history of the Parsi community in India; then take a look at the first three links in this feature on a Parsi cookbook; finally, go take a look at Sue’s wonderful series of photographs, “Scenes from Parsi Life“. That should give you enough of a context to get started here. Continue reading