{"id":5508,"date":"2016-03-10T14:30:20","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T09:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=5508"},"modified":"2016-03-10T14:30:20","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T09:00:20","slug":"bombay-meri-jaan-vada-pav-bombil-fry-cutting-chai-mumbai-mirrored","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=5508","title":{"rendered":"What is Bombay without the Modesty of the Vada Pav"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I<\/span><\/p> am having a strange, strange day in London. It is my 17th day away from home, the longest I have ever been away. London\u2019s a foodie\u2019s paradise. I\u2019ve obviously OD-ed on fish and chips, I\u2019ve dug into Peruvian food, kangaroo sandwiches, lots of legal steak, and just enough Chinatown duck. Yet, two days away from my flight home, I\u2019m having a visceral craving for ghar ka khana. And I can\u2019t stop thinking about the opening lines of Gerson da Cunha\u2019s poem \u201cBombay wallahs\u201d \u2013 Nowhere is ever home, but this may be the town of least effort for me \u2013 which I heard recently in an interview with <\/span>Mumbai Mirror<\/span><\/a>, where the legendary Mumbaikar reminisces about the city. This feeling of longing only magnifies when I find myself standing in front of <\/span>Dishoom<\/span><\/i>, a modern and elegantly nostalgic Irani caf\u00e9-style Bombay food export. All I want is a bite of home and familiar flavours and the menu looks like a Greatest Hits compilation from every khau galli in Mumbai, priced in hurtfully expensive pounds.\u00a0It was hard for my hungry, homesick self to define what I wanted, but I felt like something that tastes like Bombay.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThat got me thinking, what even is Bombay food? It is firstly, at least chronologically, the food of the native kolis and Maharashtrians. It is Bombil fry, misal pav, and jhunka bhakar. Next, it is food from every community that came from anywhere to help lay Bombay\u2019s commercial foundation. It is as much dhansak as it is masala dosa, it is much bun maska as it is biryani. They are all foods of Bombay, because they were made here, as the city transitioned over the last 200 years from seven fragmented islands, to an embarrassing number of BMWs clogging up Pali Hill. You would be, and pardon my French, batshit crazy to imagine the city\u2019s culinary landscape without any of them.<\/span>\n\n