Restaurants and Bombay

Over this past week I’ve had dinner at three terrific restaurants. I’ve reacquainted myself with the serene Olive, uncovered south Indian treasures at the Konkan Café, and over-ate rapaciously at a Mughal banquet laid on by Bukhara. I enjoyed all these gastronomic experiences despite having endured a whole week of the weirdness and irregularity that comes with one’s first scrap with the notorious Delhi Belly.

I can’t pinpoint exactly what I was that made me sick. It possibly resulted from the housemaid simply dunking our dirty dishes in water known to poison, or it could have been the street food I ate straight off a heated metal sheet that was situated close to where a group of dogs lay dying. Regardless of its mysterious origin, the effects were fairly easy to recognise. What started as mild abdominal discomfort soon evolved into a relentless purging of everything I ate (and some things I’m sure I didn’t). This sickness, coupled with business travel, meant my having to wage war on office bathrooms all over the country. That I got sick was unfortunate, but having to manage it while spending every waking hour in either aeroplanes, client meetings or my boss’ pressurised company made this last week a tortuous one. Quite often this week I’ve had to excuse myself from meetings to ‘take an important phone call’ – only to return half an hour later, four kilos lighter and exhausted.

But enough about my minor malfunction. I’d prefer to focus on the front end of this process, being the ingestion of amazing cuisine. Last Friday we went to Bukhara – an earthy, cavernous restaurant in the bowels of the Sheraton Hotel. This is the place that promotes itself as being among the top ten best restaurants in the world. It certainly charges as if this were the case. It’s fantastic for a number of reasons but it hasn’t dislodged Olive as my current favourite eatery. Bukhara reminded me a lot of Vlado’s Steakhouse in Melbourne because of its no-frills commitment to heart-stoppingly large slabs of exquisite animal flesh. The waiting staff look dangerous too. The men (and only men) who serve the meals are attired in medieval Afghani dress and all sport a moustache and grimace that appear carved out of wood. Their service was exemplary, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I mispronounced a menu item then they would surely rip out my heart and serve it to the other diners. Our table shared a feast of goat, mutton, fish and root vegetables. The table itself was also furnished with a naan that shared its size and dimensions with a small sailing boat.

I backed up the Friday night Mughal meat expo with a trip back to the placid Olive. Some Australian friends (Andrew, Anthea and Mooks) were travelling through Delhi and we arranged to have dinner on the Saturday night. Self-interest trumped any desire to showcase traditional North Indian fare so I lobbied heavily for the chance to introduce them to this divine institution. It was just as good as my first visit, and my lobbying paid dividends in the form of unanimous and gushing appreciation from the party.

Finally, while down in Bombay this week I was introduced to very good quality southern Indian cooking at Konkan. I’m probably off the mark here, but I believe it’s the south Indian stuff that most of us would associate as ‘typical’ Indian food. Hot and based in a gravy that’s accompanied by rice. Lovely stuff, even at 11 o’clock in the evening.

I was in Bombay for the first half of this week which allowed me to travel down there on Sunday. For those of you who share a particular sporting interest with ‘the Blue Billion’, you would have known that Sunday saw Australia face the West Indies for the ICC Champions Trophy. I flew down on Sunday morning to see the match. After getting the hotel to secure the most expensive last minute ticket they could (which wasn’t intentional), I hired a driver to speed me to Brabourne Stadium. This was a mistake, as the driver got lost in his own city and drove around mindlessly for about an hour. With a triumphant and ridiculous grin, he finally delivered me to a stadium – one that belonged to a South Mumbai primary school for the purpose of exhibiting field hockey matches. Enraged, I solicited the help of a passing taxi driver, who then got into a very physical conversation with my inept driver in an attempt to steal me as a fare. I would have gladly swapped drivers then and there but for the sequence of events that occurred next, at terrific speed. The problem was that this discourse was playing out in the middle of a rather major street. I got out of the my car; I approached the taxi; another car rammed the taxi; the taxi driver (who had been standing at the side of his cab the whole time) screamed and dived out of the way; I got back into my car; the ramming car rammed another car; I politely instructed my driver to execute a prompt disengagement; he did this.

Three smashed cars and an hour later I arrived at the correct stadium, seething because I’d missed the first three West Indian wickets. It went downhill from there, with a three hour rain delay fuelling my frustration. The Windies had disgraced themselves at the crease and the Australians were left with a shortened innings within which to play the most boring form of one day cricket necessary to achieve the required 2.5 run rate. They attempted to spice things up by removing their flagship batsmen (Gilchrist and Ponting) for 2 and 0 respectively, but even then the remainder of the game was a farce. It didn’t help that the overwhelmingly Indian crowd was utterly subdued given the absence of a home team in the final. As the delay had pushed the game past my bedtime I ended up leaving early in disgust, opting to watch the final overs while stewing in my hotel room. The highlight of the match was witnessing a spectacular lightning storm over the stadium during the rain delay. It illustrated very appropriately how I felt.

Interesting discoveries:

• Bombay traffic is even more chaotic than Delhi’s
• Most people think I’m English
• Rolls of toilet paper in India are half the size – in that they contain only half the sheets as standard issue bogroll in the West. This caused me great consternation.

Administrative facts:

• Greater Mumbai is the largest urban region in India, in excess of 20 million people
• It’s getting colder here. Today was in the low 20s.

Song of the moment:

Back in Action, by Yash Raj Music.

Another spectacular Bollywood hit, from the Blockbuster Dhoom 2. I can’t wait to see it.