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From Mumbai to Mangalore

THE President, now a mainline hotel of the Taj group, presents a range of cuisines, Italian, Mexican, Thai, all in independent restaurants, with appropriate ambience and authentic food. To these has been added, from last March, the Konkan Cafe, a large square dining room with an Arabian Sea blue ceiling. It serves food cooked and eaten by the people living along the entire length of the Konkan Railway track, from Mumbai to Mangalore.

I cannot describe the menu better than this, beginning with the East Indian cooking of Borivli and Bassein, moving to the fiery curries of the Malwan, the rich sea food of Sindhudurg and Ratnagiri, the green masalas of Hindu Goa, the peppered lambs of Karwar, and the kori gassi of Mangalore, and ending at Kasargod on the Kerala border. (Beyond lies the cooking with coconut oil.) It is one of my favourite restaurants. If you want to call me out to dinner, call me to the Konkan Cafe. And presiding over it all, from Mexico to Mangalore, is my favourite chef, Ananda Solomon.

The place looks like pictures in the 'Interiors' magazine of one of those banquet rooms in a rich Mangalorean house, but it also has a bar (serving among other potent cocktails, a blend of rum, cointreau and coconut water), a display kitchen, where they make lacy appams and jawar bhakris, and specimens of the day's catch on ice: pomfret, rawas, lobster, red snapper, mussels. Most of the seafood comes from Ratnagiri, the evening's catch, sent overnight by trucks. They are a little chary about buying the fish netted in the Bombay harbour; the sea is polluted with scores of ships riding at anchor, and Bombay High with its drilling wells and oil fuelling next door.

That is one reason. Another reason is that most of the local fish is caught in little ports around Bombay, not in the city itself, and the middle-men tend to keep their catch till there is enough to fill a truck and send to the city markets. This could sometimes mean a delay of a day or two.

So let's begin with the food. There is a nice thal on the table, a plantain leaf spread on its bottom. Bisleri is poured in metal tumblers. A wicker basket comes with crisp papads, and fat red chillis, roasted. Eat them, they are quite mild.

There is also a chilli and garlic pickle of the house, which you may eat with the papad while you study the menu. It is a diner-friendly menu, a long single card, neatly grouped into starters, and main courses of dry, semi-dry and curried dishes. There are cross-headings for seafood, meats and vegetarian dishes. And at the top of the card are recommended wines to go with spicy, semi-spicy and most dishes. Fish, rice, coconut and kokum dominate. The rice is fine, fat and unpolished, the curries are laden with coconut, you eat them with rice or sop the appams in them. The appams have a soft, spongy centre.

A lot of the seafood is steamed, some of it pan-fried. Besides that displayed on ice, it includes prawn, mackerel, baby shark, clam, crab, lady fish (kane), Bombay duck. Yes, one more thing, the spices are stone ground.

I asked Ananda Solomon to take me on a food tour of his restaurant, from Bombay to Mangalore. We began with the East Indians living in Manori, Borivli, Vasai. They are neither Goans nor Mangaloreans, as most of us presume, and their food is distinct. They cook with what are known as bottle masalas, made during the summer and bottled for the year. The masalas are bottled by different families and known by their names, the Pereiras of Malad, the Gonsalves of Borivli. And each family has its own formula, the idea is 76 different spices ground together. The spices are sun dried, therefore the bottling is done in summer.

Konkan Cafe gets its bottle masala from a lady in Borivli, and its prime East Indian dish is mutton chops. They are lamb chops, marinated in ginger and garlic, with onions, tomatoes, mustard seeds, curry leaves, and, of course, the bottle masala, pan-grilled with bread crumbs. You order them as a starter, pick up and eat them off the bone, very succulent, a little fat purposely kept on. Another East Indian dish on the menu is pan-fried shrimps with sliced raw mangoes, done in bottle masala, naturally.

From the Malwan comes mackerel, done with ginger and garlic and made into a cutlet, a sort of Malwani hamburger. This is bangda, sometimes described as the poor man's fish. It is deboned, cleaned, and steamed with turmeric leaves and lemon juice till it starts flaking, then bound with ginger, chopped garlic, green chillis and dry Malwan masala, shaped into a cutlet, and pan-fried. Bite into it, the meat yields immediately, the mouth fills with a fishy taste. Definitely more exciting than a hamburger. Bangdyachi Cutlet, if you want to know the local name. Also worth trying from Malwan and Sindhudurg is the baby shark, done in masala and fried. Local name - mousi.

At the Konkan Cafe, Goa is represented by the Hindu Goan dishes. The corresponding Christian Goan, or Portuguese Goan dishes, are ignored, probably there are enough of these available in other restaurants in town, for instance that wonderful Goa Portuguesa. Remember, the Hindu Goans use kokum instead of palm vinegar, and green instead of red masala. It's easy. Try their chicken with green masala (hirvi mirch). It is made with coconut, coriander and mint (more coriander and less mint), tomatoes, onions, green chillis, pepper corns, onions. The chicken is boneless, like all other meat dishes at the cafe.

Then down to Karwar and Mangalore, where the maximum dishes come from. There is kane, the ladyfish, small and plump, plenty of flesh. Mr. Solomon does it in a green masala of mint and coriander, some others prefer a red masala. The fish's central bone is removed, and before pan-frying, it is rolled in rice flour. Actually, the kane is available as high up as Ratnagiri, and a lot of it breeds in the sea around Ratnagiri, but it is mainly eaten in Mangalore. And it comes in sizes varying from 15 to 350 gms. At the Konkan Cafe, they buy whatever size is available on a particular day, then they apportion it to customers, either three kanes per order or four. If somebody is just starting out on fish, I suggest they begin with kane, it is a clean fish, no smell, a pleasant, almost non-fishy taste.

Also from this region comes the pomfret, wrapped in turmeric leaf and steamed. The method is similar to the Parsi pomfret wrapped in plantain leaves and steamed, or rather, broiled, and the results are quite different. The Parsi pomfret is redolent with a thick sweet and hot green chutney, this is sharp with turmeric. Also, here, the entire pomfret is used, not a filet, with the head chopped and cast away. Indians do not like fish heads, but I understand, Japanese and Koreans stand in a queue for it. The pomfret is slit open on the side and the central bone removed (the Parsi version is with the bone). The space thus created in the stomach is stuffed with a green masala of coconut, onions and whole spices, ground. Then it is folded into a large turmeric leaf and put in the steamer for five minutes. It is ready. You open the parcel in your thali, and the aroma hits your nose, the sharpness of the turmeric with the gentleness of the pomfret. Cut out a nice fat chunk and put it in your mouth, remember, there are no bones, nothing to worry about. Roll the meat on your tongue, taste the green masalas between the flesh.

I could go on, the Konkan coastline is long and it took them a quarter century to build the Konkan Railway. But I'll mention a few vegetarian dishes and be done. Chanadalchi vadi from Malvan. The chana dal, soaked overnight, is ground with fresh grated coconut, ginger, garlic, some chillis, then put on a hot plate and pat into shape. No besan, no oil, no frying. The whole gram and the fresh coconut give a nice taste. And a pineapple sassam from Hanover, a thickish pineapple curry, very mustardy, like a banana raita, and with coconut inside. There is my favourite pan-fried brinjal slices, with tomato slices on top, an excellent combination.

And a new item on the menu, Jowar bhakri, probably for the first time in a five-star hotel. It would warm Balasaheb Thackeray's lonely heart. With the jowar roti, instead of raw onions and green chillis, you eat pitle. It is gram flour (Bengal gram) cooked in whey. Whey is the watery part of curds. When you tie curds in a muslin cloth and allow the water to drip out, that water is whey, and the flour is cooked in this whey, with some chopped onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes. And that's Konkan for you. The Konkan Cafe, Hotel Taj President.

- By BusyBee
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