Last month we welcomed a return visitor to Mumbai in the form of my father-in-law, Tony. Or as Jasper calls him, Daadaa, which is Hindi for paternal grandfather and is the term Jasper has adopted for both my father and Dylan’s. Whichever Daadaa is in the room or on the phone is Daadaa. And the other one is Other Daadaa.
Anyone who knows Tony knows that he is a foodie. He lives to eat. He travels to eat. He will go to great lengths to seek out and consume the best of the best that a city, country or continent can serve up. I, on the other hand, fall in the ‘Eat to live’ camp. It’s not that I wouldn’t choose something delicious over something revolting if they both fell onto my plate, but I’m unlikely to put any effort into tracking down that ‘something delicious’ if it’s not right in front of me. So I imagine Tony was a little disappointed to learn that for the majority of his stay, his sustenance was in my incapable hands while Dylan was at work, himself fuelled by takeaway lunches and a free-flow deal with his office chai guy. This arrangement is much to the judgement of his colleagues, I should add, who are appalled that his wife doesn’t send him to work with a fresh tiffin every day.
By my usual standards, I actually did quite well for the first few days of Tony’s visit. His welcome dinner was Indian, of course, albeit delivered to the door by the Swiggy man. Tony, Jasper and I polished off the excess for lunch the next day while Dylan was at the office. We call Jasper the roti monster on account of his love of all the Indian flatbreads at any time of day, although his enthusiasm for the butter chicken wrapped in the roti on this occasion definitely led to some interesting digestive activities over the weekend.
The timing of Tony’s visit was dictated by Chinese New Year, or Tet, as it is known in Vietnam where Tony is currently based. This gave me a culinary theme for dinner on his second night, which again translated into some lucky leftovers the day after. No, I didn’t whip out the wok. I chucked some chopsticks on the table, ordered a delivery and hoped it would taste authentic. Which it did. There wasn’t so much as a whiff of a masala muscling its way through the soy, which makes Royal China our new favourite east asian restaurant.
Photo: Chinese New Year feast. And yes, that is a nappy as a hat. Model's own choice.
Day 3 featured a roast dinner in honour of some old Yangon friends who were in Mumbai on a recce ahead of their impending move to the city in a few weeks’ time. Day 4 was then all about the leftover roast lamb sandwiches. On Day 5 we did taco night (homemade this time), and Day 6 was fresh pasta and focaccia from a local Italian deli, after which sadly nothing was carried over. I was grateful for the number of times an evening meal was able to feed us the following lunchtime, and that I didn’t once have to try and disguise a couple of Jasper’s toddler-portioned, frozen lasagne bricks as an adult meal for Tony (something I have most certainly done for Dylan when I have completely forgotten about dinner.) I did have to make an emergency ‘let’s go to the pool cafe’ call, when I realised I hadn’t accounted for lunch for Tony and I one day. We stumbled on a coffee and chocolate festival in the local mall one morning, and Tony and I even went into Jasper's school another day to do 'Mother's Cooking' for which I helped the class-full of little rascals make fruit kebabs while Jasper clambered all over me.
I admit, now it’s written down, I do see the notable absence of Indian food on the menu after that first supper. So perhaps it’s no surprise that by Day 7, Tony was hankering after a little more local flavour. And what better excuse than India’s Republic Day holiday for me to hand the tastemaker’s reins over to Dylan to steer us through the long weekend.
India’s Republic Day falls on January 26th which is the same day as Australia Day. The celebrations (and the origins of the two days) couldn’t be more different. We joined our apartment compound’s flag raising and marching ceremony at 9am to honour the anniversary of India’s constitution coming into effect, formally separating India from the departed British Raj. It was understated and borderline sombre. We then went out to lunch at our favourite Indian restaurant - The Bombay Canteen - purveyors of trendy, modern takes on India’s vast and varied regional cuisines. Sadly, on this occasion, the mixologists had the day off due to Republic Day being a Government mandated ‘dry day’, otherwise we would have washed the food down with their twist on gin sours and old fashioneds.
On our return, we switched gears to celebrate Australia. In Australai, celebrations of the British arrival into the country on the First Fleet take a far more casual form: there are beers, there are barbies and there is banter. Jasper and I had made our first attempt at Lamingtons (sponge cubes dipped in chocolate and coconut) the day before and our inflatable kangaroo was ready for a wrestle. Decorum was abandoned and we spent the second half of the day eating cake and watching Bluey on TV. And don’t tell anyone, but we did crack open some beers - Aussie Aussie Aussie!
The following day was a Friday, and marked only the second time Dylan and I have been out past sunset together. It’s not that we don’t want to explore Mumbai’s restaurant scene, it’s mostly that we don’t get around to it. By the time Dylan is done with a long day’s work, and we’ve assessed the traffic situation and decided whether or not we have the flexibility to be tired the following day, we are already part of our sofa. That, and we would already have needed to pre-warn Jasper’s nanny that she needed to stay late and every time we have tried that, the universe has taken our barely baked plans and scuppered them with an illness, a late night call or a family emergency (never ours). But with our esteemed guest asking for the all star treatment, we decided to take the risk of the sky caving in and we made all the necessary arrangements to head out for dinner as a three. We went to Masque - one of India’s Top 5 restaurants and even considered one of Asia’s Top 50. Right up Tony’s alley!
I am all for fusion food - blending the best of different flavours and formats and coming up with something new. But I have to say that Indian fusion is almost always INDIAN (fusion). The spices and the masalas and the chutneys (not like our chutneys) and the gravies (not like our gravies either) are so overpowering that even when served up as a ceviche, they still come across as Indian. Masque’s food is spectacular, but with my ‘food is fuel’ sensibilities, the party it had in my mouth was a little too loud for my liking. And being a 10-course chef’s tasting menu, the oral squall doesn’t let up for quite some time. Some of the courses were calmer, but they were then beaten down into my stomach by whatever came next. The parting gift of a ‘betel leaf’ digestif tipped me over the edge, and I had to politely decline it and move it far enough away that I couldn’t smell it, before all the previous courses came back up to greet it. I don’t care if it’s a delicacy and a palette cleanser here, for me, the scent of betel will always transport me instantly to the back of a poorly maintained, even more poorly driven taxi, in Yangon circa 2015. I enjoyed dining out, and I enjoyed being Jasper-free for an evening, but I think for our next dinner out (pencilled in for 2024) I’d rather try somewhere with lower expectations of itself.
Hot on the heels of the taste explosion that was Masque, we went out again the next day for lunch - this time with Jasper in tow. Our destination was a very old, very established seafood restaurant to which Dylan had been taken by clients in his early months in Mumbai. Trishna is an institution. Tucked away in the Fort area of Mumbai where the narrow, labyrinthine streets are now clogged by Range Rovers, it is known as ‘Mumbai’s favourite seafood restaurant’ by locals, tourists and critics alike. We had the place to ourselves for about 10 minutes, having made the earliest possible booking, but within minutes of us having ordered, it filled up with regulars. 10 minutes was long enough for Jasper to establish that he was more interested in playing the drums on the surrounding fish tanks than he was in sitting still. Seeing his interest in live creatures, the helpful restaurant staff brought out a crab for him to pet. As it raised a bound and sinister-looking claw to wave a slow hello, Jasper scrambled his way out of his high chair and onto my lap, where he clung to me fighting back terrified tears. He didn’t even relax when the crab reappeared a short while later buttered and garlicked and uses that very vivid crab memory as a benchmark for what is and isn’t ‘scaredy’ in life now.
Photo: Not entirely sure about the jumbo prawns either, after the scaredy crab.
One crab, one lobster and some jumbo tandoori prawns later, we took our traumatised baby and our overindulged bodies home. Tony boarded his plane the next day, safe in the knowledge that he was now a veteran of 3 of Mumbai’s most notable restaurants, Dylan retained his position as culinary tour-guide extraordinaire, and I wondered how long it would be before my sweat stopped smelling of garlic. And as for Jasper, he continues to seek out pictures of crabs in all his books and to ask me “Crab not scaredy? Not like one waving at Japper?”. I can only hope that we haven’t put him off seafood for life…especially not when we’ve just booked to spend 6 weeks in Jersey this summer!
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