The Bombay Canteen at #9

The first time a friend breathlessly told me that Floyd Cardoz was setting up shop via The Bombay Canteen in Mumbai, my reaction was 'Floyd Who and The Bomb What?!'. Even at the risk of losing my 'food connoisseur' privilege card I'd confess that neither name meant much to me, but I was quick to pick up on the fever and joined in on the countdown to kickoff.

I'd add with some pride that I was the first paying customer walking in the door of TBC when they finally opened for lunch. That said, the first visit for drinks and dinner was with two of my closest med school buddies and what a fun night of food it was.

My friends kicked off with some interesting cocktails called Jhoom-jaam and Dark Monsoon that quickly got them in the mood for banter and ribbing.

After a lot of food has been had at TBC over multiple visits, one strangely magical, yet really simple dish stays with me because it makes no sense to me. Why does a half fried egg with green chutney, toast, and melted cheese go well together? No logic, whatsoever. That's the mystique of the Anda Kejriwal. Deceptively simply, but unfailingly tongue-tickling.

The double cooked tandoori pork ribs had me convinced that it would be a masaledaar desi flavored dish that would make my Mildly Spiced food-soul frown. So wrong. The ribs are long braised and then finished in the tandoor until they're like jelly on the bone and the sauce is mellow-sticky-sweet-savory...just as happiness should be. 

This has me terrified of getting my lipid panel done for what I'd see when the results come in, but until then, this is a sinful food that I see and eat in my dreams at least once every night.

There are quite a few other things on the menu that don't quite wow but deliver solid satisfaction. 

The seafood bhel is wholesome citrusy seafoody good fun dish to eat though a tad small in portion size. 

The arbi tuk is a playful take on sev puri. 

The methi arugula salad is a nice fusion salad that I've eaten and enjoyed a few times by now, and 

The fried lotus stem chintu is one of the best renditions of the dish in the city. The trick's in slicing the lotus stem almost carpaccio thin!

The baba jamun is a naughty bevda take on a gulab jamun. Make a gulab jamun like a donut, pipe some pista cream in it, soak with a bit of sugary solution and then douse it with...Old Monk. Buddha Sadhu has seldom tasted this good!

And if you're a product of the 80s, then a trip to TBC will be a trip down memory lane with a lot of nostalgia trigger. Go. Go. You'll see what I mean.

Top 10 meals of 2015; Salt Water Cafe at #10

Choosing the ten best meals out can be rather easy for most people. Especialy, people that don't eat out often. Or people that simply don't care enough about what they eat. It does get trickier for a more demanding food soul and a body that eats out rather too often for its own good, I need add.

So, here's an indulgent look at the 10 best Mumbai restaurant meals of 2015. 

#10 - 

A planned lunch with strangers at Salt Water Cafe in Bandra was the first coming together of the food equivalent of the X-Men. The food, generally, teetered between good and great, but never hit spectacular notes. What was interesting was the shared chemistry of a bunch of disparate food lovers. When a shared love is deep and genuine, there are few barriers of age, gender, or geography (well, that is a factor in Bumbai!). People come together and stick together. They even play along with the finicky kid that won't commute.

It's nice to know that there are others like me out there. People that can take a meal very seriously. People that revere good food. SWC gave me that.

But to stop at this would be grave injustice to the purpose of portraying great meals. Salt Water Cafe gave me two genuinely wonderful dishes. 

The poha crusted prawns at SWC are wonderful. They combine a marathi boy's genetically encoded love for pohe with the sublime Mildly Spiced western style of lightly batter frying prawns. The crunch of the crisp pohe, the succulent juiciness of the prawns, lick of the mellow herbs, and the acidic kick from the liberal addition of citrus courtesy moi...they were bloody delicious.

The salmon with citrus elements and fennel was a dish out of MasterChef Oz, especially towards the Top 4 end of the competition. Truth be told, the tragedy of the dish was that I had to share it with 4-5 other people. On a more self-indulgent day, I wouldn't let anyone else touch it. It's a dish that appears pretentious but is all pure substance for the Mildly Spiced soul. Salmon and citrus were a pair meant to be together from the day they were born. This love pair is a playfully naughty one like Michelle Pfiffer's and George Clooney's in One Fine Day. It dances, it twinkles, it's frothy and light, and yet, it's substantial.

On the more 'grub' side of the affair, SWC turns out mean smallish burgers, nice risottos, and good fish mains. Go, get em tiger.