Eat Street

If you read my last post, you'd recall I mentioned I was going to stuff myself at Mohammad Ali Road - the haven for Mumbai's Ramadhan feast. Last evening, a bunch of us (met/introduced on Twitter) managed to brave the crazy rains, a bus strike that eventually got called off by evening, and a train motormen's threat to strike that was withdrawn before it even began and actually made it to this massive food orgy.

Now I didn't carry my camera along, but seeing the enthusiasm of @ghaatidancer with her camera, I tried clicking some on my phone just for kicks. Even though they are really sad, I'm still going to post them here because, well, it's my blog and I'll do whatever I want. :P On a serious note, I don't want to write too much today. So, amidst much talk about people going on a fast, here I am talking about a feast...  

Presenting some snapshots from my Thursday night-out:

Minara Masjid - the epicentre of the food extravaganza at Mohammad Ali Road. To reach here, take the left after you reach the end of the Crawford Market road where it meets the JJ Flyover and keep going straight. You can't miss it.

In the lane next to Minara Masjid: This building has not changed at all. It looked the same even when I first  saw  it in  2005.  I think even the lights  that were not working then are still not working. Love the green inverted bubble lamps that were hanging outside the windows.

Sadly, hardly any photos of the food were taken. We just devoured everything we tried. My first-time eats were: haleem, malpua and mawa jalebis. Haleem is absolutely brilliant - a happy addition to my comfort foods list. It's a pasty khichdi made with goat meat, ghee, dry fruits, lentils (I think, but someone mentioned lapsi or broken wheat) and slow-cooked for hours. A bowl of it topped with deep-fried onions cost 40 bucks but was super filling. And heavenly.

Mawa Jalebis being fried in the background - @ Rs. 40 for 250 gms - basically it's the gulab jamun (foreground) base fried like jalebis. As @ghaatidancer quipped, they're like "gulab jamuns on crack". Super syrrrrrupy - love them!

Besides these eats, we tried an assortment of food: chicken tikka, chicken minara, bheja (brain) masala, kaleji (liver) masala with rotis. A friend of @chhavi's turned up and suggested we try these slightly-larger-than-marbles kheema kebabs. Piping hot, crispy on the outside, soft and oozing with flavour on the inside. Yummm! 

@chhavi also ordered one large malpua which she hardly ate but we almost finished that off too. No sweat! :) Everything was then rounded off with two phirnis in small wide clay pots shared among the eight of us. Just two because we were really stuffed by then.

Before we left, I picked up some mawa jalebis and phirni pots to take back with me. I also picked up blackcurrant phirni in a plastic container to try. That's at home in the fridge right now. Will eat later tonight. I bought it more for its pretty purple colour than for anything else. 

I might post 1-2 photos on the other blog... One photo of the jalebi-frying man has a painting-like blurred effect which I liked. 

I know a lot of people, including myself, think the place and the food is overrated. But for me, this is a quintessentially Mumbai experience worth making a trip for. If you wish, you can relive my first time there with this post. That's about it, I guess. Burrp!

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