Skyless night

The layers of dirty brown air standing over Indian cities are visible anytime one takes a domestic flight, but what I witnessed yesterday was something absurd. Peering out of a window after the seat belt sign flashed on, I couldn’t see a thing, no Baha’i temple, no long canal, no fields or towers. It was the same minutes later, when, having brought the plane down a few thousand feet and aligned it with the runway, the captain asked flight attendants to take seats for landing. This was no billowy white fog, nor even the smog that is thick on the ground on winter mornings. It was just dirty air. I looked at my watch when I discerned a road, and the wheels touched ground exactly 75 seconds after that moment. Till then we’d been flying blind, aided solely by navigational instruments. I walked off the plane at 1pm; the day was warm, 30 degrees Celsius. Looking up, I thought of a question I’d struggled with as a child: What exactly is the sky? Most days, we see clouds streaking the blue, and the sun, millions of miles distant; and at night we look up at stars that are light years away. From the tarmac at Delhi airport, all I saw was an even brown diffusing the sun’s rays into a glare uncomfortable to the naked eye. The sun itself was entirely occluded. Whatever the sky might be, it isn’t what was visible over Delhi yesterday.

A skyless night followed the skyless day. The moon, needless to say, was invisible and ineffectual. The city's lights created what looked like a red dome above me, of a shade somewhere between rust and blood. Early for a dinner meeting, I walked around Hauz Khas village. A little way off the gentrified stretch, restaurants vanished and offices grew sparse. A cybercafé was followed by a broken-down general store. Then single-room tenements, old men sitting around in vests and pyjamas, children in rags playing hopscotch. Millionaire landlords in waiting.

Reversing course at a garbage tip, I moved upscale again. Tangled cables and crisscrossing electrical wires ran a few feet above head level, providing semi-legal power to semi-legal eateries where expats and affluent Indians hung out in equal numbers. I climbed up a dozen flights of narrow stairs to Bohème, and took in a marvellous view of the tank that Khilji built and Tughlak spruced up. It reminded me of a restaurant in Lahore called Cooco’s Den which overlooks the Badshahi mosque and is reached after huffing and puffing up about as many steps. Dishes on the Cooco’s menu are raised to the terrace in baskets from a ground floor kitchen. Nothing so quaint at Bohème, but I could sip on some semi-legal beer instead, which I thought a pretty good bargain. After a couple of drinks, we moved down to Gunpowder, lavishly praised by food critics, but, as it turned out, grossly over-rated. We had buffalo and goat that had been cooked so mercilessly they were impossible to tell apart. As for the appams, better crisp-fluffy ones are to be had at Culture Curry near my home in Shivaji Park.

It was cool this morning, and the sky was blue.

x

The Guardian on Bombay street food

If the article on galleries carried by the Guardian was bad, the one on the city's street food is arguably worse. It doesn't have as many mistakes, specially since Sardar is now correctly identified as being close to Bombay Central station rather than Churchgate as was the case when the list first appeared. The web allows such changes to be made after publication, and Nayantara Kilachand's corrected the most striking ones in her article. However, Monisha Rajesh, who wrote the street food piece, has a problem so fundamental it can't possibly be set right: she doesn't understand what 'street food' means.
Of the places she singles out, Sarvi is a sit-down eatery for the working-class of Nagpada, and a popular take-away for the affluent. It's large and airy by Bombay standards, very far from a street stall. The same is the case with Sardar (not Sardar's; the Indian love for apostrophes seems to be shared by foreign-born desis), Olympia Coffee House, Cream Centre and Mahesh Lunch Home. In other words, five out of the Guardian's ten recommended street food places are actually restaurants. In the case of the crab at Mahesh Lunch Home, the article now admits the dish isn't exactly street food.
There's also a video on the same subject presented by Vandana Verma. She starts with a home-cooked tiffin (not street food) before moving to Swati Snacks (a mid-range vegetarian restaurant, not close to street food), then takes an auto-rickshaw (that's the cut-away, anyway) along a route where no auto rickshaws operate, to a sandwich vendor whose only qualification is that he stations himself outside Verma's old school.
By the Guardian's criteria, a tour of London's best street food joints might involve bangers and mash at the Marlborough Arms and high tea at The Ritz.

Hakkasan Bandra

I dined at the Mayfair Hakkasan two years ago courtesy of Dinesh and Minal Vazirani of Saffronart. It was after a discussion on 'Junctures and Departures: Locating Modern and Contemporary Indian Art' at Saffronart's Bond Street gallery. I recall the food being good though not exceptional. What struck me most about the space was how crowded it was. Also, the waiters going around asking each diner about food allergies.
I've also dined at the restaurant which used to occupy the space where Hakkasan, Bombay, is now located. It was called Seijo and the Soul Grill, and its main dining area was demolished the day after we ate there. I believe that was a coincidence.
Apparently, Hakkasan has fulfilled license requirements by building a completely retractable roof, so it's unlikely to face the same fate as Seijo. It looks sturdy enough to make a believable indoor space; ripples of light pass over the slanted wooden ceiling as if there were a swimming pool somewhere; it's just the work of some fancy projectors.
The service, we found, is faster than McDonald's, if you count the queueing up time at McDonald's on a Saturday night. We walked into Hakkasan at 8.30, and our mains were in front of us at 8.40pm. We were done eating by nine, having consumed delectable, melt-in-the-mouth pork belly, and some chicken that came in an intriguing pickle-flavoured gravy. There was just a hint of that gravy, of course, nothing like those bits of reconstituted flesh swimming in sauce that one is used to in Sino-Chinese fusion cuisine.
For dessert we moved down the street to San Churro, which serves the best Espresso Mocha and the best thick hot chocolate in the city.
Hakkasan claims to have a dress code, and I suppose they turn away guys in shorts. Even Olive does that. But already, Bombay's famously casual attitude to clothing, one of the things I like best about the city, is having an impact. There were plenty of people in T-shirts, jeans and shirtsleeves. Which fits the place really, because, though Hakkasan's pretty expensive, it doesn't seem opulent.

Vadilal does a Häagen-Dazs

Vadilal ice-cream had retreated for years to its home base, Ahmedabad, but is now taking another stab at capturing a chunk of the market in other Indian cities. It is advertising a new range called Vadilal Gourmet. The ad, which you can see here:



is a straightforward copy of commercials Häagen-Dazs has run for a while:


The question is: can Vadilal's Belgian Chocolate flavour mimic the Häagen-Dazs taste? Now that would be a copy worth checking out.

Kababs etc

I'm staying at Nizamuddin for two days, so naturally I braved the flies and dirt of the road leading to the dargah, and lunched at Karim's. The meal was fine, the seekh kababs succulent and flavourful, but I was reminded of the hype about the restaurant by articles quoted on the menu's front page.

It is strange so many people believe Karim's offers some kind of authentic Mughlai cuisine. To begin with, what we call Mughlai is very distant from what the Mughals ate. Aside from this fact, which applies to all Indian restaurants claiming to serve Mughal dishes, Karim's stands out as particularly inauthentic because all the food coming out of its kitchens is cooked in a partially hydrogented vegetable oil known as vanaspati. It's a cheap ghee substitute originally marketed by Unilever, and based on a chemical process that's been used in industrial-scale manufacturing for exactly a century (Procter & Gamble began making Crisco in 1911). There were no Mughals left in 1911, but had there been any, I can guarantee they'd have turned up their noses at the idea of kababs and biryani cooked in vanaspati. Jabeen and I did exactly that when we first dined at the Karim's in Old Delhi over a decade ago, and I'm sure the Mughals had more discerning palates where this kind of food is concerned.

Karim's has gone posh in the past couple of years; the Nizamuddin branch is now a spacious, two-level affair with air-con. The owners clearly have no need to use vanaspati as a cost-saver any longer, but they've stuck with it. They believe, I suppose, that their regulars have acquired a taste for the inferior, trans fat laden cooking medium they have used for decades.

Unlike the Mughlai tradition, the nawabi one that flourishes in Lucknow has genuine claims to authenticity: a number of current chefs are descended from men who cooked for Wajid Ali Shah and his extended family.

One such chef has opened a chain of biryani and kabab eateries called Kakori House. The three Kakori House outlets in Bombay have a few tables for in-restaurant dining, but operate mainly through delivery and take-away. They provide by far the best home delivered kababs I have had in my life. The first time I ordered from Kakori House I wasn't fully satisfied. We asked for haleem and galouti kababs, and didn't care for the consistency of either. It's one thing for kababs to melt in the mouth, quite another for them to be melted before they get to the mouth. I like meat to be at least a bit aldente since, unlike the nawab for whom the galouti kabab was supposedly invented, my teeth are virtually intact. Kakori House's burra kababs, which I was treated to by my friend Jerry and subsequently ordered from home, provide exactly the right combination of resistance and softness. Their smoky flavour is exceptional, way better than most high-end Indian restaurants can manage; and the biryani is brilliant as well: flavourful but not over-spicy, and loaded with juicy goat meat.

Kakori House is a premium caterer: most dishes cost between 150 and 300 rupees. But for those who are sick of run-of-the-mill Mughlai offerings, and are willing to pay extra for real quality, I whole-heartedly recommend this relatively new chain, particularly the mutton biryani and burra kababs.

Investigating vegans

I came to this article from Time Out a bit late in the day. It's about a meat eater turning vegan for a week in the interests of investigative journalism. There's precious little investigation done, however; as is normal in the Indian media, anything anti-meat gets a free pass. In all these years of reading Indian newspapers and magazines, I cannot recall coming across a single prominent, coherent defence of non-vegetarianism. What do I mean by 'coherent defence'? Well, something well reasoned and backed by facts, like this great article about foie gras. Since foie gras involves force feeding ducks or geese, it's pretty much the worst thing a human can eat from a moral vegetarian point of view. Among the things Kenji Lopez-Alt reveals in his essay is that geese and ducks do not have a gag reflex; therefore, having a tube stuck down their throat does not traumatise them as it would a human being.
Vegetarianism I can handle, at least of the non-proselytising variety; it offers plenty of healthy eating options for those inclined to eschew meat, and it possesses a strong supporting moral framework. But vegans are like Jehovah's Witnesses: not only do they follow an idiotic, fanatical philosophy, they obsessively try to convert all and sundry to it.
I thought I'd annotate part of Neha Sumitran's vegan-for-a-week article, because I'm annoyed at the silly ideas of a vegan preacher being given so much free play in an excellent publication. Sumitran's words are in itals, mine in normal font.

Now for the snacks. Careful scrutiny of the miniscule list of ingredients on the labels revealed that most of Parle’s biscuits (Magix, Monaco, Nimkin and Hide and Seek) are all vegan, as is Bourneville chocolate (no milk, just cocoa butter) and Pickwick cream wafers.

I've noticed a number of good writers spell 'minuscule' as 'miniscule'. They are so confident of the 'mini' bit they don't bother spell-checking it. But the use of 'mini' as a root is recent, and back-dated in our minds to connect with words like 'miniature'. 'Miniature' has nothing to do with size, however; it is derived from 'miniate', meaning 'to paint or tinge with red'.

The list of ingredients on a bar of chocolate or pack of biscuits is not only minuscule, it is incomplete. A company is only obliged to list non-additive ingredients if they constitute more than a certain percentage of the product by weight. That percentage varies between 5 and 25% depending on the product and the nation. What this means is there's no way of telling a product is vegan by looking at the ingredients' list. In the list Sumitran provides, I suspect not a single entry is entirely free of animal products. Bournville (not Bourneville) chocolate certainly uses milk powder or condensed milk. Ther's no way of making chocolate without dairy products, unless one uses soy as a substitute or else raises the cocoa percentage to something like 70%. The writer's vegan week was, it turns out, pretty unvegan.

[Nandita] Shah’s name popped up many times over the course of the vegan week. The founder of Sharan or Sanctuary for Health & Reconnection to Animals & Nature, is from Auroville, near Pondicherry, but travels across the country to convince people that dietary and lifestyle changes can result in better health. Shah’s most popular lecture, Peas vs. Pills, has been conducted in India, Europe and the US. As I sipped on hot herbal tea at her workshop in Lower Parel later in the week, I learnt that vegans rack up karma points for more than being kind to animals. A 2006 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation says our omnivorous diets generate more greenhouse gases than all the cars in the world. It blamed meat production for contributing 14 to 22 per cent of this toxic smog. It turns out that vegans, with their soy-lattes, Pickwick wafers and aloo-tikki subs, are actually saving the world.

It ought to be illegal to put soy lattes, Pickwick wafers and aloo tikki subway sandwiches in the same sentence on grounds of good taste. Why doesn't the article talk about all the great vegan food we eat in the normal course of things in India, roti sabzi, daal chawal, idli sambhar, that kind of wholesome, appetising food, rather than these mutant inventions?

The 2006 FAO report referred not to meat production but to the livestock sector as a whole. It is true these animals are raised for meat in places like the US, but that's not the case in poor countries like India, where male cattle are used mainly as draft animals to produce... the grain and veggies vegans love.

Meat production does strain the environment, particularly in its factory farming mode. But the real threat to the environment began with the invention of agriculture. The most environmentally friendly societies, which regulate their own populations carefully, are tribes of hunter gatherers. And they're all meat eaters. Women in hunter gatherer societies usually suckle their infants for extended periods as a birth control technique; that's because the lifestyle can only support a population of something like 1 human per square kilometer of earth. Agriculture allows a far more intensive exploitation of resources, and therefore permits a massive increase in population density. The huge surge in human numbers that's the ultimate cause of environmental degradation began with farms taking over forest land.

But many vegans in Mumbai haven’t give up animal-derived products just because it is a dearly-held cause. They do it because they believe a vegan diet is healthier and to help them lose weight. Shah’s 50-person workshop was filled with people who would never hoard Pickwick wafers in their bags, as I had. Groups of middle-aged women exchanged vegan recipes and talked about their weight loss, the energy they’d gained and how their skin and hair was glowing more than ever. Shah, a doctor of homoeopathy, has been vegan for over two decades herself. She claims that a healthy vegan diet (one that even eliminates vegetable oil) will not only control but reverse diabetes, hypertension, obesity and auto-immune diseases.
“Who is a mother dog’s milk meant for?” she asked at the start of her workshop. “A puppy. Even a kindergarten kid can answer that. So why are cows any different?” One might ask, what about the vitamins and calcium and protein we get from dairy? According to Shah, a cup of kale or spinach leaves, or two tablespoons of sesame seeds, has double the calcium in a glass of milk. The only essential vitamin that vegans can’t get from food, she claimed, is B12. The debate over whether we should be dietary hunters or gatherers is the religion vs science argument of the food world, and it was clear which side Shah and her crew were on.

I'm waiting for the PETA video showing cattle mistreated in the production of grain. If one is concerned about animal rights above all else, I don't see how one can eat anything in India; not just milk, everything's produced by exploiting animals.

For those who claim veganism is the natural state of humans, there is one insurmountable stumbling block: Vitamin B12. It can only be derived from animal products. Mammals that do not eat other animals get it by one of two means. Many regurgitate food, and the semi-digested cud brings with it B12-rich bacteria that grow in the stomach. Non-ruminants get their B12 by eating faeces. Since humans are not ruminants, and don't in general love ingesting shit, they can only get B12 by eating animals or animal products. An absence of B12 in the diet will cause anaemia and a degeneration of the nervous system leading eventually to death. So how do vegans get their B12? Through vitamin supplements. Since our forefathers had no pills to pop, no fortified cereal to munch, it's safe to say they'd have gone extinct had they not been omnivores. It's disappointing that a supposedly investigative piece fails to question a vegan propagandist more closely on this obvious Achilles heel. But that's the sort of free ride I've come to expect.

Asia 7 at Palladium, Phoenix Mills

The first thing I notice is the noisiness of the place. We have a table for two, but it's sandwiched between family-seaters, and there's nothing absorbing the sound. I ask for a glass of Spanish red wine, Jabeen a sake cocktail. Sorry, we don't have sake. OK, a mojito then, and a plate of sushi. There's little difference in price between the platter we order and the vegetarian version. I can't imagine anybody paying handsomely for vegetarian sushi, but evidently there are plenty of such people around.
The mojito's oversweet, the wine's watery. Sushi's not bad: some way from Wasabi, obviously, but a notch above the stuff at Global Fusion. We decide on Beijing lamb chops and sticky rice for the main course. Sorry, we don't have lamb chops. OK, the beef Bulgogi, then. Asia 7 is so named because the cuisine covers seven Asian nations: Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Korea and Japan. Indonesia must feel left out. Can't get no sataysfaction. OK, that's not true, Chicken Satay is listed, as Malaysian. The restaurant missed an opportunity to be Asia 8.
The beef is extraordinarily tender, by far the best part of our meal. It's not as flavourful as the Bulgogi one used to get at Busaba, cooked as you watched. Busaba, unfortunately, discontinued the tableside performance, saying customers objected to beef being grilled so publicly. The Bulgogi never tasted as good brought ready from the kitchen.
What went into the sticky rice? We use only pure basmati sir. I knew it, but might as well confirm. Basmati's a thing of joy in biryanis and pulaos. It is out of place in joints like Asia 7. I mean, if they charge 250 rupees for a plate of rice, surely they can get the right type. The sushi, I have to say, didn't appear to use basmati. We skip dessert, which is the usual boring Chinese restaurant list, date pancakes, honey tossed noodles and that kind of thing.
Not a bad dinner overall, but I doubt I'll go back to Asia 7 for a while.

High Five

It's about a decade since Five opened on SV Road in Santa Cruz, and in those ten years I've eaten there about a dozen times and never been disappointed. It's one of the few restaurants in Bombay with real atmosphere, a great place for a quiet date or anniversary meal. A few meters away, Yoko's and Dynasty provide factory food to clients who can't get enough of it. Five, on the other hand, though much smaller, usually has tables vacant.
That wasn't the case when we dined there last night. The owners have placed two tables in the patio to augment the eight inside, and even these were occupied by the time we left. Being full, the restaurant was noisier than usual, but we could still converse with ease. My two companions had eaten late in the afternoon and decided to make do with soups and starters. We ordered celery soup, a catalan seafood soup, a seared mushroom, feta and spinach salad, cajun chicken, a braised lamb shank, an order of garlic bread, a Red Bull, a kiwi cranberry daiquiri and a sparkling melon cocktail. The bill, including taxes and service charge, came to just over two grand, which is pretty reasonable by Bombay standards, though obviously way out of reach of the 45% of Indians who earn less than 20 rupees a day (The mind boggles. 20 rupees a day. Surely there's a typo there).
In Bombay, red meat almost always comes from goats, but is called lamb in the fancier places. Since the lamb shank was fattier than goat meat usually is (I didn't mind, the fat was pretty flavourful, and the meat tender, almost falling off the bone), I made enquiries and was told the shank was sheep meat. I didn't ask if the sheep was less than a year old. The mushroom and feta salad came with spinach that had been perfectly sauteed in olive oil. It neither sat limp between cheese and fungus, nor was dry and greasy like the crispy stuff in Chinese restaurants. The Cajun Chicken was the lone letdown, being indistinguishable from Chicken Tikka.

Wine whine

I've been largely cut off from the Web these past days because MTNL developed one of its regular glitches. My connection's just been restored, and I find myself with a stack of posts which seem outdated. Like, does anybody want to read about Love, Sex Aur Dhokha anymore?


So let me skip to something current. The Maharashtra government has announced a plan to produce wine made from wild berries. The water resources minister Ajit Pawar promised to fund the venture if it is found feasible. The question arises: what is the government's definition of feasibility? Almost anything is feasible if you are willing to subsidise it enough.
I ask because Ajit Pawar also said, in the same breath, that "in Nashik, where making wine from grapes is huge business, the industry is making losses with barrels of wine remaining unsold in wineries". He's not exaggerating: one of the major vintners in the state has been declared insolvent and ordered to wind up is operations. If grape wine can't make the cut, what are the chances that fermented wildberries will turn a profit?
The reason why wineries are in trouble is because of absurdly high taxes levied by, guess who, the state government. In other words, the government subsidises the production of wine in a number of ways, including direct payments, and then ensures the product will not succeed by taxing it to death. Anybody who has tasted Indian wine knows that it is, for the most part, of middling quality, with some seriously bad plonk thrown in. I wouldn't mind paying 150 or 200 rupees a bottle for this quality of liquor, but the price at the store is usually twice that or more. If you go to a restaurant, you get jabbed by the substantial liquor license fee being passed on, and then hit by a 25% VAT haymaker. If the booze doesn't get you tipsy, the bill is sure to leave you reeling.
The excise department behaves like the erstwhile Department of Prohibition. In recent months, beer sales in Bombay have gone up substantially because of the entry of new brands, the availability of pint bottles, and the belief that beer will beat the breathalyser. Revenues from the brew rose by almost 100%, to 700 crore rupees in the last financial year. The reaction? The Excise department raised the duty on beer by almost 25%, supposedly as a revenue boosting measure. Hello, guys, your revenues have been boosted already, what you've gone and done is guaranteed to dampen them. Leaving the government with less money to throw away on wildberry wine.

Freshly ground pepper for you?

You know those mills that waiters use to grind fresh pepper onto your Caesar salad in upscale restaurants? They seem to be getting bigger, like guns did in Hollywood movies between the sixties and eighties. One specimen we spotted at Olive the other day was so ridiculously large I had to take a picture of it. How is a server supposed to point that thing and get his aim right?


By the way, I did NOT ask the waiter to hold the pepper grinder in that position. He was rather reluctant to pose at all, poor guy. He tried offering the object to other staff, but they hurried off, and he was too polite to refuse my request. Luckily, the image quality is so poor he's barely recognisable.
Olive has a new menu, but some things haven't changed. Like, the food we ordered was good, but not exceptional. That's always been the case. I haven't tasted a memorable dish there, nor an atrocious one. Funny the same middling quality should have been maintained through changes of chefs and proprietorship.

Kingfisher Ultra

My friend Adrian, a beer connoisseur and real ale enthusiast, has posted his list of the ten best brews in the world. I'm not much of a drinker myself, but have recently discovered a beer I love, Kingfisher Ultra.


Those of you who've tasted this new product might be muttering, "Well, if that's your favourite beer, you can't be much of a drinker." I've read a couple of reviews of Kingfisher Ultra, and they haven't been enthusiastic; the beer is sweetish, mild, malty and super-smooth, which happens to be the way I enjoy it.
While I'm at it, let me confess I also like Vanilla Coke, and feel really bad that it tanked in India and was withdrawn soon after launch.

What waiters should never do

Bruce Buschel has compiled a list of 100 things restaurant staffers should never do. I've supplemented this with a list of my own geared to Indian restaurants. Please add your own pet peeves.

DO NOT

drag furniture across hard floors while setting tables if some guests are already seated.

form chatting huddles at the counter or in corners.

proffer plastic bottles of water for temperature checks.

watch the cricket match on TV instead of attending to guests.

crouch, or place a hand on a chair and lean down to speak.

automatically suggest the most expensive item on the menu when asked for recommendations.

presume guests will order a particular dish because they have done so the last dozen times they visited.

insist on helping guests place napkins on their lap after they indicate they are capable of doing it themselves.

be stingy with menus by having two guests share a card and then snatching it away at the first opportunity.

place the bill before the male rather than at a neutral spot after a couple finishes dining.

Serve red wine warm (room temperature in Bombay is rather higher than room temperature in Bordeaux).

The shack season in Goa

Goa's tourist season is still some way off, but a squabble's begun over a share of the spoils. It concerns shacks that come up along the state's beaches in winter. Back in the day, one or two could be found on each stretch of sand, but now they colonise every available square foot, and the number of prospective owners increases each year. The government handles the lucrative task of doling out permits.
The Shack Owners Welfare Society (SOWS, what could be more Goan?) is lobbying for old timers to be favoured, while the Goan Traditional Shack Owners Association, which appears to be traditional in the way the German Democratic Republic was democratic, wants a lottery to determine who will get space and where.
On the face of it, the demand for a lottery seems fair. The truth is, though, that most of TGTSOA's members have no interest in the restaurant business. All they want is to sublet the space to a non-Goan, making a tidy amount for doing nothing.
I spent a lot of time in Goa in my teens because my father was posted in Vasco, and that's when I discovered the state's beach shacks. The fish on offer was invariably fresh and cheap, and never smothered in heavy sauce. The quality of fare varied considerably, it has to be said. I recall one place in Anjuna that kept me waiting an entire hour before serving pomfret that was close to raw. But even that barely edible dish, and the lackadaisical attitude behind it, captured something of the spirit of the place that was screened out in fancy restaurants.
The last time I visited Goa, in 2007, Jabeen and I found the scene changed utterly, even from our own previous visits. Not only were there dozens of shacks to choose from, but they had much more elaborate decor and extensive menus. All minimalism had disappeared from the cooking, replaced by heavy, restaurant-style slop. Few of the waiters were locals: they came from UP, Bihar, even Nepal. The laid-back Goan pace had been replaced by frantic hard-sell. Perhaps worst of all, prices were now higher than in sit-down places on the main street.
It was still charming enough: I mean, how unpleasant can it be to sit sipping wine at a candle-lit table near the waterline with a breeze blowing landward? I knew, though, that the mood I'd experienced as a teen had died. If it was to be recaptured again, it would be on a beach in some other country which had yet to adjust fully to the demands and rewards of mass tourism.

Trishna: Go Fish

When we want to give visitors a taste of Bombay, one of our top dinner options has always been Trishna. It's a pity the waiters there are crabbier than the menu. Last night, after a panel discussion at NCPA, I entered the restaurant slightly ahead of Jabeen and our friend Anindya.
Me: Table for three?
A steward pointed to one of four empty tables. As I headed there another called me back.
Steward: When will your friends arrive?
Me: In about ten minutes.
Steward: Please wait here till they come, sir.
Me: But I want a beer. Why can't I sit at the table and wait for them?
Steward: Sorry sir, all tables are reserved.
Me: But you just told me that one was free.
He says nothing.

I wanted to leave right then, but I knew Jabeen wouldn't be in a restaurant hunting mood after a tough day that had taken her from Dadar to Andheri to Mazgaon to Colaba . I hung around near the door, reading a framed article from the International Herald Tribune which heaped praise on Trishna's crustaceans, but was considerably less enthusiastic about the waiters.
Me (to steward): See, even this review says your service is surly.
Steward (nonchalantly): There has to be something bad in a place, everything can't be good.

Despite myself, I couldn't help laughing at this philosophy. We give you good seafood, why would you want anything more? My two companions arrived, and a table was promptly dereserved for us. The king crab we had was appropriately delicious, and the other dishes weren't bad either. But two further unpleasant incidents marred the evening.
First -- and this is something I've experienced in a number of restaurants -- Trishna's menu lists prices for 30ml pegs, but if you ask for a vodka or whiskey their default option is to provide a double. At the bottom of a broad glass one can't necessarily tell it's a 60ml shot. In fact, I'm certain the first serving we were provided was a small measure. The bill, however, told a more expensive tale.
Second, the place behaves like an Udipi restaurant once the food has been consumed. No lingering over your drink and conversation even if there's nobody waiting for a seat. The waiters start fussily removing plates and cleaning up, and ask repeatedly if there's anything else you need when it's quite apparent there isn't.

I'm not sure if those crabs -- hardly cheap at around 1000 rupees per specimen -- make up for the bad service, the cramped seating and the liquor trickery. I've gone the crab in butter-garlic sauce route often enough, and would rather spend an evening at a restaurant where the food may be less flavourful, but the overall experience leaves me satisfied.

Food Exports and Carbon Footprints

At a wedding reception last evening I was seated next to a Danish journalist who looked at everything around him with an anthropologist's eye. Is this traditional wedding food? Is using forks and spoons traditional? Are these traditional dresses? Would you traditionally greet me with folded hands or a handshake?
Traditionally, shaking your hand would defile me, I considered saying. It would necessitate a long bath and a few extra prayers.
He told me he specialised in writing on food. Not reviews of new restaurants, but the impact of globalisation on eating habits and the environment. As if on cue, a waiter stopped by our table and offered us kiwifruit juice.
"Ten years ago, one couldn't get kiwifruit in India", I told him, "they only become available after food imports were liberalised".
He asked me where they were grown. I said I wasn't sure.
"New Zealand, perhaps?" he suggested.
"That's what the name indicates, but maybe it's from somewhere closer".
Back home after the reception, I looked it up, and found kiwifruit originated in China. They were was first planted in New Zealand about a hundred years ago by a returning missionary, and named Chinese gooseberries, though they are not berries. In the 1950s, an American company importing the fruit suggested a name change because anything Chinese was suspect in those days, and because there were high tariffs on importing berries. After one or two failed renamings, 'kiwifruit' was settled upon.
The Danish journalist did not like the idea of food travelling great distances before being consumed. He even expressed displeasure at butter cookies being exported out of his home country. I've come across this attitude often enough since the issue of food miles became a hot topic about five years ago. Brits in particular have gone bonkers over the idea that food transportation contributes massively to global warming and responsible individuals, therefore, are duty bound to eat local produce.
Studies published over the past twelve months reveal that the hue and cry over food miles is a lot of ado about nothing much. Christopher Weber and H Scott Matthews of Carnegie Mellon University found that, for American households, 83% of diet-related greenhouse gases were created during the production of food. Only 4% were emitted during the transport of foodstuff from producer to retailer.
Mere facts, of course, aren't going to turn devotees of local food away from a cause that offers them opportunity to feel morally superior.
But consider the Dane for a minute. If he is an average European gent, about 1.5 tons of CO2 will be spewed into the atmosphere to keep him fed for a year. Presuming the Webers-Matthews formula works for Europe, 60 kilos of this will involve shipping and trucking from place of origin to location of sale. Meanwhile, his personal CO2 account has been inflated by 1.5 tons solely as a result of a return flight to Bombay for a friend's wedding.
I am not arguing that food transport ought not to be an issue at all. There's been at least one instance in the past when the lengths the trade will go to shocked me. Eight or nine years ago, on a trip to Delhi on the Rajdhani, the last time I used that relatively environmentally friendly mode to get to the capital, I was in a compartment with three businessmen. One of them peddled Amway, the second was in real estate and the third, a kid, was partnering his uncle in an ice cream operation. The kid outlined his business plan: since tariffs on food products had just been revised downwards, he would import ice-cream from the US and sell it in India. Crazy idea, I said to myself, they'll never get it off the ground. A few months later, at the end of dinner at a friend's home, the host produced a tub of Blue Bunny ice-cream. That was the brand the kid had spoken of.
As we dug into dessert, I said, "Funny, they're actually managing to sell American ice-cream in India."
"Baskin Robbins is American too, that's been here for a while", the host replied.
"No no, Baskin Robbins manufactures ice cream locally, Blue Bunny is made in the US and shipped across in a giant freezer."
The laden spoon the host was directing to his mouth stopped in mid-air. With his other hand he picked up the tub and examined it. A label stuck on it said, Imported Feb 2001, or some date like that. Looking ill, he put the spoon back down. Both he and his wife are very environmentally conscious. In fact, she's recently left her job in software to run an organic food store. I'd just managed to ruin their evening.
Blue Bunny didn't last long in India. Priced at the top end of the market thanks to shipping costs, it never achieved the scale it needed to be viable. I'm happy about that. Food miles skeptic I may be, but I wouldn't buy ice-cream made half-way round the globe.