Two Cafes - One Saturday Morning

Last Saturday, Guru and Subha were in Bandra for Subha's pre-natal exercise sessions. When they suggested that we go to Cafe Madras for brunch I jumped at the opportunity.


After the customary hunt for a parking space in the 'never-enough-kerb-space' confines of the tree shaded Matunga, we joined the throung outside Madras Cafe, and, surprisingly soon enough, we were squeezing our selves onto the small benches and a table—that always reminds me of adults trying to sit on nursery school furniture.








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Here is a map if you want to find the place or just drive to it from somewhere.

The venerable Cafe Madras

Now—the food... Matunga is a cornucopia of food from the Southern reaches of India. Cafe Madras is just one of the many places that serves excellent and authentic 'South Indian' food. The food here is a good mix of Udupi Cuisine. Udupi (or Udipi) food is distinct and famous enough to have its own extensive Wikipedia entry.. So...
I digress...
We started ordering medhu vada sambar to a waiter who gave us a baleful 'give-the-order-quickly' look and told us that it would take a 'lot' of time. (It never came...)


Even while we were in the process of figuring out what to order, some coconut chatni clattered onto our table. I quickly demolished almost all of it. The fresh coconut chutney was heavenly! Especially after the raw dal and few flecks of coconut and gallons of water that you get everywhere else...


So Guru ordered some sambar rice. This came with some very interesting papad pieces with red chilly flakes and well... more chutney.
If a Tamilian Guru is ordering sambar rice here, it definitely stamps a lot of promise for me...

Next Subha's order of rawa dosa plonked on the table. I have found rawa dosa horribly difficult to make. So I enjoy every opportunity where I get to dig into some thin and crunchy rawa dosa that is just perfectly done.

I had ordered peserette/pesarattu. This is a very interesting dosa variant that has fresh green mung daal soaked and crushed along with the rice to make the batter.


The crisp exterior hid a steaming soft inside and an interesting, simple, filling of chopped onions par cooked with some spices that I could not completely fathom. 

Since the vada sambar had still not arrived, we cancelled the order and ordered a plate of curd rice each.

And of course a meal like this will never be complete without a round of filter coffee!
Of Subha had a second round of coffee. :)

While Subha waddled off to do funky things to her hair, Guru and I were wondering (and wandering) about what we should do to kill time till she was done.


Matunga continues into Kings Circle, so we soon found ourselves crossing the road towards Koolar & Company.

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Our rather distended stomachs did not really permit us to try the Kheema or the Wrestler Omlette...
So Guru and I sat and nursed a nice Irish Terror.

This something I STRONGLY recommend. :) Strong black coffee with whipped cream, demerara, and a splash of run can never be bad.

Tomato Porar Chutney

I'd decided to make something with panch phoron after digging in and deciding to write about it.... So...

Here is something very easy (it took me around 15min). I made this yesterday night for dinner. Had it along with Begun Bhorta and chappati.

Although you can just chop the tomatoes and throw them in the pan, I like the slightly charred flavours that come with things cooked directly on a fire. Much as I would prefer wood, I had a gas oven at my disposal at 10 in the night when I decided to make this for dinner after playing with the cat.

I put a bit of wire mesh on the oven to char and cook, since it does not mess up my gas oven. You can see the tomatoes happily cooking here... It took five minutes. I did not have tongs (or chimtay as we say in Bengali) so I used chopsticks to turn the tomatoes over after the part on the fire was done.

While the tomatoes were cooking, I added the panch phoron to some smoking hot mustard oil.

Soon the tomatoes joined the party in the pan with  the panch phoron. Be careful not to burn the panch phoron. You can see the ideal colour of the spices in this photo.

Then I added a wee little bit of sugar. You could too, if you like a sweet and tangy chutney like me (although my origins are more bangal (east bengal) ghotis or people who origins lie in the western part of Bengal would prefer this).
  

Tada! I'd some warm comfort food (that was surprisingly healthy!) to eat for dinner.

Try this out and let me know how it turned out...