Here are two places that I visited recently Bridge Cafe turns out to be the oldest surviving bar in New York, which is big in a city where some 99% fail in the first few years. Situated just below the Brooklyn bridge on Water street, it turned out to be a small, plain cafe that... Continue Reading →
Real Indian
I have often bemoaned in these columns (ok I haven't ever bemoaned and this isn't even a column but I think it makes me sound like I'm getting paid for this - lets not get distracted here) that Indian food abroad is a bit like Chinese food in India. Every restaurant sells the same menu,... Continue Reading →
Boiling Basmati
A friend of mine recounts with much amusement how I once gave a long speech on cooking rice to some hapless woman at a grocery store. Here's the shortened version Rice is the staple of Indian cooking, so one should not treat it lightly. Basmati is the king, but making it as fragrant as the... Continue Reading →
Steaking San Diego
I never expected to like large slabs of meat barely cooked and served with nothing, but steaks have a way of growing on you - sometimes literally.There are two steak joints of note inches from where I work - Rainwaters on Kettner and Ruth's Chris. One a resolutely independent steakhouse, one part of America's largest... Continue Reading →
Counting Chickens
America is a land of choices. In India you go to a store, ask the guy there to give you a kilo of chicken, and he hands you a bag of the stuff that you go home and cook it. That doesn't work in America. In the land of the choices, you're faced with breasts,... Continue Reading →
Fish Some More
As benefits a coastal town, San Diego is full of seafood restaurants, from hole-in-the-wall fish taco places to black-tie affairs. I've already written on some of them earlier, but I recently had a chance to go to the two that were the highest rated on downtown - Point Loma Seafoods and Top of the Market.... Continue Reading →
Chickening out
Chicken is simple to cook. If you put your mind to it then a delicious, genuinely Indian chicken dish is not that tough. Of course, there are some basics to cooking chicken Indian style. First, boneless chicken does not work - lose the bones and you'll have a weak tasteless gravy. Second, the skin has... Continue Reading →
The Bitter End
Bongs are very fond of bitterness. I'm not talking attitude or psychology; this is something that's far more important to the bhadrolok - food, or more specifically the first course at lunch. Now the whole business of a bong lunch is ridiculously elaborate. The full ceremonial version, usually served when someone is dead, goes to... Continue Reading →
Sandwiching Milan
Malpensa sounds like a Bengali dessert but is actually the name of Milan's airport - as a disembodied announcer has already announced several times in the twelve hours I have spent here. Airports aren't usually food destinations. Even in countries that should know better, the fondness for food and drink seems to stop at the... Continue Reading →
Go Bananas
Kolkata is always an indulgence in food. It helps, of course, that my aunt is both keen and competent as a cook. Bengali food is all about simple spice combinations and exotic vegetables. Given that Bengal is full of banana trees, it isn't unexpected that banana florets - which we call mocha - is on... Continue Reading →
The Well Fed Bong 