I eat out a reasonable bit...possibly more than I should, but much less than I want to. And, I'm picky.
I don't like my food too spicy (or even moderately spicy by the regular desi standards), or too oily or too 'loud', which cuts out most food places.
So, your fav place that adds Amul chijj on their Chandigarh or Noida made pasta? Ya, that place doesn't work. Heck, store-bought pasta doesn't work.
Or that cheap-ass pijja place where the melted cheese ends up being as stringy my grandfather's pajama draw-strings. Ya. That's a ding too.
Or the Continental food places that drown every dish under a chijj sauce and the fish is stale. There ought to be some way to legally force their owners to eat in-house food for every meal.
Or the place that serves authentic Marathi food, and also adds on Chinese and Punjabi dishes to their menu. That doesn't work either. MSG is a no-no. Poison powder.
Or the Punjabi place that uses a single mother sauce for all dishes from paneer tikka masala to chicken do-pyaza to mutton rogan josh. And they overcook the protein so much that if Matt Preston were to taste their food, he'd look the cook in the eye and then stab himself in the heart with his fork.
NONE OF THESE PLACES WORK FOR ME!
Now, once you've finished calling me a snob and we get through the screening analysis, we have filtered out a good 97-99% of food places in Mumbai. What we are left with is a small selection of places that can, in theory, give me a decent meal. Maybe.
Admittedly, some of these places have many hit-or-miss dishes so a good experience is a matter of luck and deliberate planning and ordering.
Over the last four years of eating out in Mumbai (and before that, in many cities in the US), I have realized that meal experiences have physics-like or statistics-like patterns and distributions.
1) Straight Bad, Through and Thru - You can use your fancy filters, read reviews, ask food-lover friends that eat out a lot, but fate always likes a good laugh and you'll always have a missable wedding reception to attend or a frenemy with an evil design or an uncle that knows of your food love and wants to show you a hidden gem (that a niece or office junior has pointed out) and he will drag you there and the only pluses you'd walk out with are a) Full belly, b) Hopefully, at least a reasonable catch up chat with the friend/uncle, and c) A superior 'I told you this place is shit' smirk.
With the right attitude, you can keep these soul-sapping experiences to a minimum. You know the good places, if this place is not on that list, don't go. Life is too short to consume dirty, ugly, and tasteless calories.
2) As Average as an Average Can Get - Similar to Situation #1, you'll have another friend and another uncle who swears by this place close to his medical college or near his home that he'll tell you makes the best goddamn food of some particular type/cuisine and he wants you to come and attest to its awesomeness. After all, what place does not need my benediction?
And you'll go there, hesitant, fearful, hopeful, and the dishes begin to pile in.
The owner knows your friend/uncle and backslaps him and reminds him of the house and the car and the son's iPhone the friend/uncle has paid for.
And your friend/uncle folds his sleeves and dives in, and soon ooohs and aaahs emanate from the other side of the table and lines like 'See, didn't I tell you? This is heaven' or 'I want to eat exactly this meal before I die', and all you can do is feign some enthusiasm because your taste buds, like an angry spouse, are angrily muttering that the food is ordinary (at best, and horrifyingly bad, at worst) and 'How could you?!'. That, it is not the least bit satisfying, and is far far far from having you utter ooohs and aaahs. And, like a tied and gagged thug that's being given the maharaja-grade third degree experience, you know there is no recourse for complaint. You can't trot back home and write a moan-full blog entry about the food's ordinariness. There is no vent. No outlet. You will take it like a man.
Indeed, you would likely end up lying to the friend/uncle about how good the food was, and the punishing scar of that white lie will be stamped on your food-soul, forever. Don't you think you can float 6 inches above the ground, you liar. You lied because you wanted to be liked.
3) Cibus interruptus (food version of coitus interruptus) - This is an interesting experience that I've had with a few people, but more so with my Dad.
It's simple, really. I do all the diligence to find a good food place that would make me (and the fam) seriously happy, then we do the commute, and sometimes the wait for our table. I order a beer and a few appetizers while I study the menu some more.
Two-three appetizers come in, the chilled beer makes the Daddy super happy.
Koliwada prawns disappear as does the bombil, and ZAP! The Slim Daddy goes 'OK! That's it. I'm done. Can't eat any more.'
HUH? Did we travel all this distance in Mumbai traffic for two small appetizers? Slim Daddy shrugs, 'I'm a small eater. What part of that did you not know?' And no wild horses and Rambha-Urvashi mains or other-worldly desserts will force this Vishwamitra into submission.
One measly main between the Ma and me, and the meal comes to a premature end.
PS: A few girl friends stand accused here as well, but it's safer to name me Papa since he'll never read my blog. No harm, no foul.
4) Simple Harmonic Motion (or Kabhi Uppar Kabhi Neeche) oscillator aka 'Hits n Misses Galore' - This is your standard experience in a Mumbai fine dine, cuisine and price point no bar. Go to any restaurant as part of a group and order a bunch of appetizers, a bunch of mains, and another bunch of desserts, and I promise you that your food experience will wildly oscillate between ho-hum and 'oh, wow!', between the ridiculous and the sublime.
A likely scenario is where a beautifully set platter of pork ribs or prawns or fries would come in, and I'd be busy getting the perfect shot; somebody is insolent enough to steal 'just one, ya!' and it tastes good, oooohs and aaahs, and before I've finished checking if I got a good shot on my dSLR, and the food's gone!
Or someone has left me a crummy half piece. Truly an example of 'you snooze, you lose'.
Or the other way around, and the food on the dish is ordinary, and people know it's been a mistake ordering it, and they'd steal a quick mournful glance at it but wouldn't shovel a fork-full into their bleedy hungry mouths.
For every mind-melting hit that makes your heart soar, there is a miss diss that lands you hard on your ass. It's a jarring journey. But it will be your reality if you eat out often enough. So, buckle up.
5) (Not a) Happy Ending - There was this wonderful sign outside a 'desserts only' place close to UCLA (in Los Angeles) that read 'Life's too short; eat desserts first', and it strangely resonated with me since I'm not a big lover of sweet stuff. I find it unappealing to follow the forceful convention of the appetizers --> mains --> dessert routine.
Why must I have my food in that order? I prefer the lingering taste of savory on my tongue at the end of a meal. Can I please get my dessert first? We can move to the tuna tartare and the ribs and end the meal with some exquisite John Dory or barra or halibut.
No? Why not? It bothers you? It bothers the restaurant manager?
At other times, I've ordered a trusted loved dessert only to be sorely disappointed, and as Nobel Laureate Dan Kahneman will tell you, your entire experience is almost as good (or as bad) as the way it ended. Then, I'm back to ordering a savory dish to end on the right note. It is a tiring exercise for people with a food-soul.
6) The Meal That Soars - The significantly uncommon experience is one where I breeze in and get the perfect table. There are no kitty parties, no cranky children, no leaking roofs, no high-roller parties. I get a knowledgable and pleasant guy or gal to wait on my table. She gets what kind of food me (and my company) like. She knows the menu inside out. She's tasted it and has recommendations and she throws you a lifeline by saying she'd take a dish back if you don't like it. She knows just when to linger and chat food and she knows when to leave me alone with my company.
The ambience is great because it's raining outside (or more rarely, it's Mumbai winter), I don't have pending work calls, course after course floats to the table billowing pleasant aroma, is heart-wrenchingly pretty to look at, and tastes even better.
Ne'er a slip. Every course timed to perfection. The chef and his staff on-song, their attention focussed on satisfying my every gustatory and food-soul need.
Flavors, textures, aromas flit in and out, entice, enamor, seduce, and disappear. The company is great. The conversation and laughter bubbling...like a brook one moment, and bursting like The Old Faithful another.
I can honestly say 'I want my last meal to be exactly like this'.
This...this is not common. I wish it were, but it's not.
I am sure I have missed many different patterns, and I want you tell me what I've missed.
And I want to hear about your experiences, even as I swim across the Sea of Mediocrity trying to find the Islands of Excellence and the meal that will set my food-soul free for at least a week.
From this post to the next...
I don't like my food too spicy (or even moderately spicy by the regular desi standards), or too oily or too 'loud', which cuts out most food places.
So, your fav place that adds Amul chijj on their Chandigarh or Noida made pasta? Ya, that place doesn't work. Heck, store-bought pasta doesn't work.
Or that cheap-ass pijja place where the melted cheese ends up being as stringy my grandfather's pajama draw-strings. Ya. That's a ding too.
Or the Continental food places that drown every dish under a chijj sauce and the fish is stale. There ought to be some way to legally force their owners to eat in-house food for every meal.
Or the greasy noodle place with noodles floating in oil with a few decaying bits of broccoli and wilted zucchini breaking the monotony and adding the healthy touch.
Or the sushi place where the nigri is topped by a carpaccio thin slice of fish that was caught a week ago.
Or the sushi place where the nigri is topped by a carpaccio thin slice of fish that was caught a week ago.
Or the Punjabi place that uses a single mother sauce for all dishes from paneer tikka masala to chicken do-pyaza to mutton rogan josh. And they overcook the protein so much that if Matt Preston were to taste their food, he'd look the cook in the eye and then stab himself in the heart with his fork.
NONE OF THESE PLACES WORK FOR ME!
Now, once you've finished calling me a snob and we get through the screening analysis, we have filtered out a good 97-99% of food places in Mumbai. What we are left with is a small selection of places that can, in theory, give me a decent meal. Maybe.
Admittedly, some of these places have many hit-or-miss dishes so a good experience is a matter of luck and deliberate planning and ordering.
Over the last four years of eating out in Mumbai (and before that, in many cities in the US), I have realized that meal experiences have physics-like or statistics-like patterns and distributions.
1) Straight Bad, Through and Thru - You can use your fancy filters, read reviews, ask food-lover friends that eat out a lot, but fate always likes a good laugh and you'll always have a missable wedding reception to attend or a frenemy with an evil design or an uncle that knows of your food love and wants to show you a hidden gem (that a niece or office junior has pointed out) and he will drag you there and the only pluses you'd walk out with are a) Full belly, b) Hopefully, at least a reasonable catch up chat with the friend/uncle, and c) A superior 'I told you this place is shit' smirk.
With the right attitude, you can keep these soul-sapping experiences to a minimum. You know the good places, if this place is not on that list, don't go. Life is too short to consume dirty, ugly, and tasteless calories.
2) As Average as an Average Can Get - Similar to Situation #1, you'll have another friend and another uncle who swears by this place close to his medical college or near his home that he'll tell you makes the best goddamn food of some particular type/cuisine and he wants you to come and attest to its awesomeness. After all, what place does not need my benediction?
And you'll go there, hesitant, fearful, hopeful, and the dishes begin to pile in.
The owner knows your friend/uncle and backslaps him and reminds him of the house and the car and the son's iPhone the friend/uncle has paid for.
And your friend/uncle folds his sleeves and dives in, and soon ooohs and aaahs emanate from the other side of the table and lines like 'See, didn't I tell you? This is heaven' or 'I want to eat exactly this meal before I die', and all you can do is feign some enthusiasm because your taste buds, like an angry spouse, are angrily muttering that the food is ordinary (at best, and horrifyingly bad, at worst) and 'How could you?!'. That, it is not the least bit satisfying, and is far far far from having you utter ooohs and aaahs. And, like a tied and gagged thug that's being given the maharaja-grade third degree experience, you know there is no recourse for complaint. You can't trot back home and write a moan-full blog entry about the food's ordinariness. There is no vent. No outlet. You will take it like a man.
Indeed, you would likely end up lying to the friend/uncle about how good the food was, and the punishing scar of that white lie will be stamped on your food-soul, forever. Don't you think you can float 6 inches above the ground, you liar. You lied because you wanted to be liked.
3) Cibus interruptus (food version of coitus interruptus) - This is an interesting experience that I've had with a few people, but more so with my Dad.
It's simple, really. I do all the diligence to find a good food place that would make me (and the fam) seriously happy, then we do the commute, and sometimes the wait for our table. I order a beer and a few appetizers while I study the menu some more.
Two-three appetizers come in, the chilled beer makes the Daddy super happy.
Koliwada prawns disappear as does the bombil, and ZAP! The Slim Daddy goes 'OK! That's it. I'm done. Can't eat any more.'
HUH? Did we travel all this distance in Mumbai traffic for two small appetizers? Slim Daddy shrugs, 'I'm a small eater. What part of that did you not know?' And no wild horses and Rambha-Urvashi mains or other-worldly desserts will force this Vishwamitra into submission.
One measly main between the Ma and me, and the meal comes to a premature end.
PS: A few girl friends stand accused here as well, but it's safer to name me Papa since he'll never read my blog. No harm, no foul.
4) Simple Harmonic Motion (or Kabhi Uppar Kabhi Neeche) oscillator aka 'Hits n Misses Galore' - This is your standard experience in a Mumbai fine dine, cuisine and price point no bar. Go to any restaurant as part of a group and order a bunch of appetizers, a bunch of mains, and another bunch of desserts, and I promise you that your food experience will wildly oscillate between ho-hum and 'oh, wow!', between the ridiculous and the sublime.
A likely scenario is where a beautifully set platter of pork ribs or prawns or fries would come in, and I'd be busy getting the perfect shot; somebody is insolent enough to steal 'just one, ya!' and it tastes good, oooohs and aaahs, and before I've finished checking if I got a good shot on my dSLR, and the food's gone!
Or someone has left me a crummy half piece. Truly an example of 'you snooze, you lose'.
Or the other way around, and the food on the dish is ordinary, and people know it's been a mistake ordering it, and they'd steal a quick mournful glance at it but wouldn't shovel a fork-full into their bleedy hungry mouths.
For every mind-melting hit that makes your heart soar, there is a miss diss that lands you hard on your ass. It's a jarring journey. But it will be your reality if you eat out often enough. So, buckle up.
5) (Not a) Happy Ending - There was this wonderful sign outside a 'desserts only' place close to UCLA (in Los Angeles) that read 'Life's too short; eat desserts first', and it strangely resonated with me since I'm not a big lover of sweet stuff. I find it unappealing to follow the forceful convention of the appetizers --> mains --> dessert routine.
Why must I have my food in that order? I prefer the lingering taste of savory on my tongue at the end of a meal. Can I please get my dessert first? We can move to the tuna tartare and the ribs and end the meal with some exquisite John Dory or barra or halibut.
No? Why not? It bothers you? It bothers the restaurant manager?
At other times, I've ordered a trusted loved dessert only to be sorely disappointed, and as Nobel Laureate Dan Kahneman will tell you, your entire experience is almost as good (or as bad) as the way it ended. Then, I'm back to ordering a savory dish to end on the right note. It is a tiring exercise for people with a food-soul.
6) The Meal That Soars - The significantly uncommon experience is one where I breeze in and get the perfect table. There are no kitty parties, no cranky children, no leaking roofs, no high-roller parties. I get a knowledgable and pleasant guy or gal to wait on my table. She gets what kind of food me (and my company) like. She knows the menu inside out. She's tasted it and has recommendations and she throws you a lifeline by saying she'd take a dish back if you don't like it. She knows just when to linger and chat food and she knows when to leave me alone with my company.
The ambience is great because it's raining outside (or more rarely, it's Mumbai winter), I don't have pending work calls, course after course floats to the table billowing pleasant aroma, is heart-wrenchingly pretty to look at, and tastes even better.
Ne'er a slip. Every course timed to perfection. The chef and his staff on-song, their attention focussed on satisfying my every gustatory and food-soul need.
Flavors, textures, aromas flit in and out, entice, enamor, seduce, and disappear. The company is great. The conversation and laughter bubbling...like a brook one moment, and bursting like The Old Faithful another.
I can honestly say 'I want my last meal to be exactly like this'.
This...this is not common. I wish it were, but it's not.
I am sure I have missed many different patterns, and I want you tell me what I've missed.
And I want to hear about your experiences, even as I swim across the Sea of Mediocrity trying to find the Islands of Excellence and the meal that will set my food-soul free for at least a week.
From this post to the next...
Fabulous writing Y!Loved the bits about the chijj,places serving Marathi/north Indian/Chinese and the vishawamitra analogy!:D
ReplyDeleteThanks, Shwetaa! Ya, pet peeves all. Especially, places like Trishna which specialize and then yield to temptation to serve Chinese. Seriously! Ditto Irani joints. Why?!
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