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: Seafood
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
Sarangaa (Bombay, April 2026)
Alright we’re back in Bombay. When last seen, I was at Pradeep Gomantak in Fort eating a Goan seafood thali. This week’s report also involves a seafood thali but this report comes to you from Prabhadevi, from a less-storied restaurant than Pradeep. Indeed, until we ate there, neither I nor my dining companion—a long-time resident of the city—had ever heard of it. We had set out to eat Malvani dinner at Chaitanya but had arrived to find a projected wait of 90 minutes or longer. Chaitanya’s food is outstanding but we weren’t about to stand around for 90 minutes. So we checked Google Maps to see what else was around and found another Malvani restaurant, Sarangaa just a few minutes walk away. There was no wait at Sarangaa and so we quickly got down to business. Continue reading
Wonjo Agujjim II (Seoul, March 2024)
I know I said I’d finally post my report today on our meal at Tenant in Minneapolis at the start of the month. But I really do need to wrap up my reports from Seoul: it’s been three months now since we left the city. Luckily, I have only four more reports to go. Two this week, two next week and I’ll be done before the month ends. Of the four remaining reports two are of places I ate at for the first time on this trip and two are of places I ate at on my solo visit to Seoul in March 2023. Both of the latter were places I particularly enjoyed and knew I was going to go back to for sure with the family in tow. One, of course, was Gwanjang Market (which we indeed went to multiple times); the other was Wonjo Agujjim. I’ll close out my Seoul reports with a Gwanjang Market wrap-up. Here first is a look at a larger meal at Wonjo Agujjim than I was able to manage on my own in 2023. Continue reading
Jagalchi Market (Busan, March 2024)
And now let’s finally get back to South Korea. You may recall we spent five weeks there in February and March of this year. Most of that time was spent in Seoul but we did go down to Busan for a few days at the end of February/beginning of March. I’ve previously put up a compendium post on a number of meals eaten on that short trip. Here now is a report on the last. It’s not just a meal report though. The last thing we did in Busan before heading to the train station to return to Seoul was visit the famous Jagalchi fish market. If you’ve been following my trip reports for a while, you will not be surprised to hear that this was one of my favourite outings in Busan. Yes, I do love fish markets. We spent some time wandering through the market and then a subset of my students joined us for lunch at the market. Here are the details. Continue reading
Eating at Noryangjin Fish Market (Seoul, February/March 2024)
Last weekend I posted a look at my visits to Seoul’s famous Noryangjin Fish Market, complete with an excessive slideshow of images. Noryangjin is a massive fish market, yes, but it is not just a fish market. The market also contains a large number of seafood restaurants on the second floor where you can have things you bought at the market cooked up to your specifications or where you can order off a menu as at a regular restaurant. I ate at the market on both visits, accompanied on each occasion by groups of my students. Here now is a report on those two meals, one a weekend lunch in February and the other a weekend dinner in March. As you’ll see, the experiences were not identical. And you’ll be glad to know that together they add up to another excessive slideshow of images. You’re welcome. Continue reading
Gajalee, Andheri (Bombay, January 2024)
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
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
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
King Sitric (Howth, Summer 2023)
Back to Ireland, but not quite to Dublin. I’d said I might have a report from the fine dining end of things in Dublin this week but I seem to have misplaced the notes I took on the dishes at that meal. So while I scramble to find them, here is a quick look instead at a seafood lunch in Howth, a lovely seaside town, just about a 30 minute train ride from the center of Dublin.
We had been planning to go to Howth pretty much every weekend since we arrived in Dublin, but between a busy schedule and bad weather it didn’t end up happening till almost the very end of our stay. But we did make it out there on a lovely sunny Sunday in August and it was a lovely day. We spent the morning walking one of the longer trails along the cliffs of Howth, and when we descended to the town, we were ready for lunch. That lunch was at King Sitric. Continue reading
Fish Shop (Dublin, July 2022, 2023)
Back to Dublin for the first of my reports on non-Asian food eaten there (my previous reports have been of Persian/Kurdish food, dim sum and South Indian food). This report on the very popular Fish Shop on Benburb Street actually covers meals eaten across two summers. The family and I were in Ireland for six weeks this summer on an off-campus program I was co-leading; and the previous summer, my co-leader and I had visited for a week to survey the scene, as it were. Somehow I never got around to posting any reports on the eating done on that trip—perhaps because I got Covid when I got home and lost track of a lot of things. Anyway, my colleague and I enjoyed our dinner at Fish Shop in July 2022 very much indeed, and there was not much doubt that I’d go back to it again on the longer trip with the family in tow. And so it came to pass that we ate lunch there in July 2023. Here’s a quick look at both meals. Continue reading
Pentagon (Goa, January 2023)
Now that my Delhi reports are almost done—the last one will probably be posted tomorrow—it’s time to make some headway on my food reports from our side trip to Goa from Delhi. I’ve already documented our first stop on the way from the airport to the house we were staying in in South Goa. That was at the large fish market in Margao. I picked up enough fish and shellfish there to keep us stocked for dinner for almost our entire stay. Lunches, however, were eaten out, as we took breaks from basking on beaches. A few of those lunches were eaten at shacks at Cavelossim Beach—our headquarters by the water—but for a few we drove further out. The first such was this lunch at Pentagon in Majorda. It was a special outing for the older boy’s birthday. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Shrimp Curry with Tomatoes
Here’s another recipe from August when I was trying my best to use up the flood of tomatoes coming in from my plot at the community garden. In this case, I also had on hand a few pounds of excellent Gulf shrimp purchased from a seafood truck that drives up from Texas to the midwest every summer. Normally, I would have made malai curry with shrimp this good but, as I said, I had a metric tonne of tomatoes to use up. And so I pulled together a relatively basic shrimp curry. Relatively, because two ingredients give the curry extra depth and bite, respectively: dessicated coconut and Sichuan peppercorn. The heat comes mostly from the black peppercorn in the spice mix, with a Kashmiri chilli [affiliate link] used more for colour. It’s a simple recipe that comes together quickly and delivers great flavour for a weeknight or weekend meal. Continue reading
Mixed Veg Torkari
One of my favourite quick weeknight dishes is zeera-alu—potatoes stir-fried simply with cumin, dried red chillies and turmeric. That’s the base recipe (not a million miles from the version posted here). After the initial frying step it literally cooks itself and so it’s a well I go to often. The last time I set out to make it, however, I couldn’t resist adding more and more things and ended up with a mixed-veg torkari (to use the West Bengali term for a slightly moist stir-fry of vegetables). And in true Bengali manner I also couldn’t resist when a packet of shrimp came to hand when I was looking for peas in the freezer. The resulting dish was really rather good and I offer you an approximation of it here. An approximation because—as the shoddy Instagram reel I made of the process shows—it was all done by the seat of my pants. Well, that’s home cooking—a little bit of plus/minus here and there is not going to hurt anything and I would hardly expect slavish fidelity to any recipe I post anyway. Give it a go. And you can just as easily leave out the shrimp and make it vegan. Continue reading
Las Islas (South St. Paul, MN)
I have lived in southern Minnesota for almost 15 years now but I’m only just beginning to really get a sense of the suburban geography of the Twin Cities metro. For example, for many years when I’d hear names like West St. Paul or South St. Paul I assumed people were referring to the western or southern bits of St. Paul. Now I know they’re actually referring to what are officially separate towns—both of these towns, by the way, have populations close to that of the town I live in, about 50 minutes south of the Twin Cities. And the demographics of these suburbs can vary quite a bit. South St. Paul, for example, has a large Hispanic population. Indeed, people of Hispanic descent are the second largest group in the city at nearly 15% of the population. I bring this up because it might explain why a Mexican seafood restaurant opened here, just about two years ago, during the pandemic and has managed to weather it so far. I’m not sure if there’s been much coverage of it elsewhere but I saw a reference to Las Islas on the excellent East Metro Foodies Facebook group a couple of weeks ago and my interest was piqued by their seafood-centered menu, heavy on ceviches and the like. And so this past weekend we descended on them with a couple of friends. Here is what we found. Continue reading
Holbox, Again (Los Angeles, Dec 2021)
One of our favourite meals on my last visit to Los Angeles before the pandemic was at Holbox, the seafood-centered counter at Mercado La Paloma from the people who first brought us the excellent Chichen Itza. We have been plotting a return ever since, never expecting that it would take another three years. Of course, dining out on this trip was complicated. While proof of vaccination is required for dining in at restaurants in Los Angeles proper—the mandate is not really being followed elsewhere in LA County—our preference was also for dining outdoors whenever possible. Thankfully, both sets of caution were in evidence at this meal: proof of vaccination was checked stringently on entry to Mercado la Paloma to order our meal and there was excellent outdoor seating out front on a lovely, sunny day. And so, our meal. Continue reading
Seafood Rasam
If you are familiar with rasams the idea of a seafood rasam may seem outlandish to you. Indeed, it would probably seem so to most Indians in India as well. In North India, in particular, South Indian food has long been associated with vegetarianism, and the same is true to an even larger extent outside India. The truth, in fact, is that the South is far more massively non-vegetarian than the North. Of course, in recent years non-vegetarian South Indian food has made more inroads into the North: the food of Kerala in particular has become more available and popular. Certain dishes, however, continue to be associated with vegetarianism, among them rasam, familiar to most North Indians as the peppery broth one drinks before getting stuck into a meal of idli-dosa-vada with sambar and coconut chutney. But, of course, that’s merely the hegemony of upper-caste Hindu norms at play. Non-vegetarian rasams abound in the South. All this to say that there is nothing very unusual or creative about the fact that this is a recipe for rasam with seafood. Which is not to suggest that what I have for you is a traditional recipe for seafood rasam. I have merely taken my usual prep for simple tomato rasam and enhanced the broth with the shellfish. Continue reading