A Rookie's Journey Through Food

My brother plans to go on a road trip across Bengal. You may ask what’s so novel in this idea! The novelty is that he will only visit those places which are known for their famous sweets. So, he might have to start at Baghbazaar’s Rosogolla, make his way to Joynagar’s Moa and then Shrirampur’s Langcha. Move northward to Kandi’s Monohara, look for sweets in North Bengal (I’ve very less knowledge about them), come back to Kirnahar for its variety of cheap but delicious sweets. He may also cross the border for Deoghar’s Peda and then cross back and end with Barddhaman’s Sitabhog. There may be other stops and this trip may consume a lot of money and almost a month’s time.

I don’t see the prospect of such a trip in near future as he is really busy in Nagpur. So, he will have to be content with Santra Barfi and Sohan Papdis for the time being. Last academic year was a year when I travelled across most of the region south of the Vindhyas because of my PhD entrances. It’s another matter that even after travelling so much, I failed to crack a single interview. Dipankar Sir, my MSc project guide, once said that travelling helps. And I experienced it myself. Every month I would travel to a new destination. I generally stayed with my friends but ate outside, met such different human beings and got to see all kinds of places, modern and ancient. And these happened not only in the places I visited but all along the journey, in trains, in buses, in autos, in boats and even in the short airplane ride I undertook. These journeys taught me a lot. A lot which even books failed to teach me.

Before undertaking a journey I generally eat up the whole Wikipedia and Wikitravel page of the city I’ll be visiting. And as I told earlier, my hosts will show the rest of the things which wiki overlooked. Thanks to my studying at so many places, I’ve friends across the country (now across the globe). And I never discussed only physics with them. I intricately tried to learn the culture and food habits from them. I’m not a great cook and my taste buds have been spoilt by 10 years of hostel food. But, I still can distinguish good food. So, enough of patronizing myself! Let’s embark on the journey with this rookie.

In Nagpur, I seldom eat at restaurants. The best places are the unhygienic dhabas, chat and tapri wallahs . In dhabas our favourite is PBM (Paneer Butter Masala). I’ve found this dish to be a delicacy only in the dhabas. I’ve no idea why this happens but it’s true. Santra Barfi @ Dharampeth, Milk Cake and Sohan Papdis from Heera Sweets are the only sweets which I find good. Even though you will find so many chat wallahs at Yeshwant Stadium, my favourite place to eat Panipuri, Bhel, Ragda Patish and others will always be Bajaj Nagar. I may seem audacious but the taste is here even better than Juhu Chowpatti (I’ve eaten there). For dabheli you need to go to the guy who has his stall near the Agrasen hostel at Ravi Nagar. Another delicacy of Nagpur is ‘Shikanji’ and you find it best at Yeshwant Stadium. For ice-creams, I used to go to Haldiram’s. But of late the nicest place I know is Frozen Delights (A Dinshaw parlour) near the traffic park. Samosa is a popular eatable here and I just love it. There are so many places where I’ve eaten it but the best would be the tapri @ Shankar Nagar bus-stand. For poha, U need to go to Keshav in Deonagar or at Kasturchand park but our favourite is one on the Pratap nagar ring road. For non-veg, Babbu’s at VCA, Sadar has no parallels. Not even the Babbus at Dharampeth and Sitabuldi. Other seasonal favourites are Sugarcane juice and Lemon-soda in summer, Roasted Bhutta @ VNIT in rains and flavoured paans from Dhantoli. One more popular type of cooking in Nagpur is Saoji but I’ve never tasted it because of its high chilly content.

For MSc, I went to Pune. The mess food was utterly bakwas. Even the food at IUCAA which was a lot better got boring due to its periodicity. So, every Sunday we had to venture out for food. In Pune, I ate less at tapris and more at restaurants. Dragon @ Khadki was a place to eat cheap and tasty Chinese. Deep was for eating Bengali. Mostly the costly but good enough sweets and Alu-Posto. Art-Beat was our retreat when we used to get bored from other places and our pockets used to falter. The ice-cream parlour near it was our favourite when we needed thick-shakes. Just outside our university was Barrel’s favourite Patiswala. I got addicted to him because of Barrel. But my favourite was upma. Just along the road to Chaturshringi was the dabheliwala whom you can say to be the fellow who made me fall with this dish. But the one near Hongkong lane at Deccan is the best I’ve ever eaten. Then there is the momos and sweetcorn at Goodluck square on FC road. The fruit-dish along with a 5-rupee fruit juice glass at Deep Bungalow chowk was a respite in summers. Cold Coffee was another of my favourite all through the year. The one stall at Shivajinagar was nearer and good but my favourite will always be Durga at Paud Road, Kothrud. I don’t remember to stop at one glass ever. Another joint just near it offered another drink called Cadby. Pure Chocolate! Aniket and I used to go out for dinner almost every alternate Sunday. How much we tried to get into a different restaurant on JM road, we generally ended at Maharashtrian and ate our favourite Bajri bhakris, bharit and sev-bhaaji. We still haven’t been able to eat more than 2 and half bhakris! And when our pockets started crying, we used to go to Badshahi or Satwik on Tilak Road for a cheap unlimited meal for just 50 bucks. Pune has also got me addicted to another delicacy called as Bhakarwaadi. I’ve till now eaten kilos of Bhakarwaadi. Another favourite from Chitale is Amrakhand. For gujarati food, one must go to Sukanta near the Z-bridge. For Parathas, it has to be Chaitanya on FC road and for maharashtrian, it will be Durvankur on Tilak road.

These were the two cities which I stayed for a longer duration of time. But there are others where I just visited and happened to eat a variety of dishes. Some were really tasty and there were others which were just the need of the hour. I’ll try to chronicle as many as I can remember.

During the trip to Mahabaleshwar, we had drunk Strawberry shake with an entire strawberry floating in between the glass. On Sinhagarh, the bhakri with korda (jhunka) and curd was really awesome. On Duke’s nose, I ate so many things with so many others. I remember eating bread with idli’s chutney and baked potatoes with jam! Then there was the Masala Uttapam at Aurangabad and I remember Barrel and me gorging to at least 13-15 rotis per person at a Jalgaon eatery. The food was abysmal but we were so hungry that it skipped our attention that time. I’ve also enjoyed food at Daund, Durg & Bilaspur station just because of the hunger quotient.

Speaking of stations, I’ve been fortunate enough to travel in most of South India’s trunk routes along with my most frequented Tumsar-Howrah-Katwa route. All throughout South India, I’ve survived on Idlis, Vadas and Dosas. One peculiar thing about them is that they always sell 2 Idlis and 2 Vadas together for 20 rupees. The taste is obviously better than Nagpur but it’s sourer at Nellore, Tirupati, Jolarpettai, Coimbatore and Ernakulam. In Trivandrum, I ate mostly non-veg in the Thampanoor area. The one food that I liked was Kappa (tapioca) biryani. Chicken dishes had more chicken than anywhere but fish dishes were real cheating. The curry used to be spicy but there would be only 2-3 pieces of fish. In Kanyakumari, food is real cheap at least to a fellow like me from Maharashtra (costliest state). We gorged on Idlis, Dosas and Vadas with Filter coffee and later washed our throat with Coconut water. In Chennai, I missed eating Chettinad at Triplicane but ate good Tamil-veg at Saravana Bhavan in Mylapore. This was the first time anywhere in India that I was not given a spoon to eat. Everyone around was eating with their hands. I liked the ambience of the atmosphere there. But when I asked the waiter for a spoon for my sweet dish, he looked as if I’d asked for a moon rock!

In the messes that I’ve eaten, I’ve come across novel dishes. Shahi Tukda (Bread dipped in cream) at TIFR and IUCAA, Bhaturas of IUCAA which need ultimate human efforts to tear, Russian Salad (Cabbage cut into fine pieces topped with some red liquid), patodis at Suruchi, Nagpur, tasteless fish curry with fish bones at Holy Home, Serampore, Aloo-less Aloo ka paratha at IIT Bombay are some of the food items I remember. I also remember the Hot Rosagolla’s syrup, Chilli Chicken of Holy Home, Mexican & sweet dishes of IUCAA, Hongroises, prawns & different dishes of Chicken of TIFR as they were really tasty.

In Bangalore, I found more bakeries than any other sweet mart and in three days I gorged on a lot of bakery products. But my favourite will be the filter coffee at the shop at Amrutahalli where I used to go for my morning paper. In Bombay, we generally ate at Food-Inn in Colaba. But Suraj & I have tasted some kebabs and other items on different restaurants on the Colaba Causeway. But ice-creams at Naturals, Colaba are one thing which we got addicted to. We used to walk every Wednesday to Gateway and on the way back we used to try different flavours. Sunday, we had to go to Colaba for food and again the same routine. I got such addicted that on returning to Pune, I stopped having ice-creams anywhere but only at Naturals, Bal Gandharv Chowk!

I’m also fortunate to be friends with Kingshuk. He showed me Bangladesh (only the coastline), I travelled the cheapest (boats at 50p), ate fresh and cheap fruits. But what will always appeal to my taste buds will be the different fishes including lobsters fresh from the rivers of Sunderbans. And add to it that his mother is a fantastic cook.

Last but not the least is આપ્રો ગુજરાત (our Gujarat). I’ve visited only two cities Ahmedabad and Baroda but I relish Gujarati food. Fafda, khakra, thepla, dhokla are fantastic delicacies. I missed eating non-veg at Kalupur, Ahmedabad but gorged on veg food like anything. What helped me was Kiran jijaji (my friend Sudhanva’s jijaji) is a foodie. He loves eating and because of him I got to eat at good places in Ahmedabad. Golas at 1130 in the night was really awesome. This year I went with him for dinner party and the food was sumptuous and delicious. Ahmedabad is a dry city but the fruit drinks are labelled Whisky & fruit beer. I don’t know the real tastes but these fakes were superb. Himadri showed me the city of Baroda. This is a foodie’s heaven. Pyarelal ki Kachori, kathiawadi khadki, પેન્ડે (pedhe), ફરસાણ (farsan), Dabhoi’s bhajiye, aamras, cold drink (milk shake laced with ice-cream) and even ઉપવાસની લસ્સી (Lassi for fasts) were all there. I was unfortunate that I went on a summer afternoon. On any other cool day, it would have been a treat.

There’s so much to eat more. I’ve missed પાપડી નો લોટ (papdi no lot) in Gujarat, dosas at malleshwaram, মনোহারা (manohara) at kandi and many more. Will venture out again to satisfy my taste buds.

I take the liberty in posting this food map that I received in my mailbox.

Hope you enjoy.