Sunday mornings in Bombay are slow times historically. For nearly a decade or so, during the heydays of Ramayana and Mahabharat TV serials, the city roads used to be abandoned at those times.

Every Sunday morning used to be scouts for me and all the other boys from the colony. And after scouts, was breakfast time.

The one place that beats all others for morning breakfast is surely New York Café, on the junction of Hughes Road and Gamdevi road. Directly opposite the Mercedes showroom and Cecil restaurant.

The New York would be empty at that time. The jukebox beckons and the music enthralls. Kheema Pao with fried eggs and a couple of mugs of cold beers at 11 am, was the sweet spot of the morning.

And continues to be when time permits.

Whats your favorite breakfast place in Bombay ???

Mangoes are the national fruit obsession of India. You have to be there to experience it. From the start of the summer around April to about late June, all of India is flooded with mangoes. People cant get enough of them. Rich or poor, you gotta pig out on mangoes.

And if you havent eaten an Indian Alphonso mango, you haven’t lived life. No other country comes even close when it comes to a tastier mango. The Mexican variety is not even a close second.

Today’s NYTimes Travel Section has a very nice article on Mango Madness in India

The most important lesson: How to eat a mango, presented in a three-part mime. She first holds out a cupped hand, in which sits the imaginary glistening orange oval of a whole peeled mango; she then deftly flicks her hand at the wrist to propel the phantom mango against her mouth, which gets busy sucking the flesh down to the seed; finally, outrageously, she deploys the full length of her tongue to lick her arm, elbow to wrist, to recapture an inevitable trickle of invisible mango juice. [...link...]

Chinese food anyone??
Mumbai is famous for its various Chinese Thellas ( roadside stalls). While I am aware that most people in Mumbai meaning 60% of the population finish their meals well within 10 or 20 bucks a day, having a full-fledged chinese dinner in 35 bucks is extraordinarily sensational.
Chinese stalls can be found all over Mumbai, that is when you look out for those large red dragon signettes which for some reason translate into authentic chinese (spelled: “autantic chinis” by the owners). The quantity provided is good for two, three if all have normal appetites). The guy who posed for this picture told me that he had learnt the kala (art) of making chinese from an original china-man. And the claimed chinese cook had even given him the secret recipe of making the perfect schezuan sauce, just so that it was part spicy, part saucy and a very small portion of sweetness. Must say, even supermarket sauces dont come near the perfection of this one.

The meal cost us ( three of us) :

Shezuan Noodles :30 Rs
Fried Rice: 25 Rs
Vegetarian Manchurian with gravy: 25 Rs
A 500 ml Sprite : 22 Rs

The bad quality of the pic is due to fact that it has been taken from a cell phone.

This might not be the real chinese cuisine, but what we Indians call Chinese is just this – a lot of Chinese with a lot of Indian tossed in for good measure. Noodles from China and spices from India. And needless to say, its the best way to eat it (the real Chinese fare can be a litlle bland for the Indian tongue). In USA, most towns with a substantial amount of Indian crowds has an “Indian Chinese” restaurant, to cater to the Indian taste of Chinese.
Surprisingly the meal did not give anyone bad stomachs or any kind of ailment. Although i would not recommend anyone to try it out on an everyday basis, it sure is good for the tonsils, pocket and adventurous streak albeint once in a while.

The frequency of my occasional visit to the refrigerator seems to have increased. Just a moment ago I took the 12 calculated steps to the kitchen and had the strange Pavlovian urge to lick my lips. As my outstretched hands opened the door of my frost-free my eyes grew bigger and saliva dropped from the corner of my open mouth. All this at the sight of gold…. golden mangoes. Momentarily the searing heat, the 75% humidity, the sweat, did not matter. All that mattered was the luscious explosive flavour of India’s favourite summer fruit - the mango.

[Mother and son duo, arrange the seasons first set of Mangoes]

It may astonish you to know that the mango, Mangifera indica L., India’s most celebrated of fruits, is a member of the family Anacardiaceae-notorious for embracing a number of highly poisonous plants. All the same the fruit that has its name, Aam, derived from the Sanskrit word meaning “of the people” lives up to its name and is truly the “aam aadmi ka phal” (forgive the pun – translates to “common man’s fruit).

Be it ‘Bombay Yellow’ (’Bombai’), ‘Malda’ (’Bombay Green’), ‘Pairi’, Safdar Pasand’,'Suvarnarekha’ , ‘Langra’, ‘Rajapuri’, ‘Alphonso’, ‘Bangalora’, ‘Dusehri’, ‘Gulab Khas’ , ‘Fazli’ ,’Safeda Luck now’ and ‘Banganapalli’, you will find all these mango varieties in Mumbai at some time or the other during the season.

Mumbai is often the first urban stop of the mango so I decided to pay a visit to Crawford Market to welcome the first crop of mangoes this summer season has brought us .

Here are some pictures

[Fresh mangoes, fresh from Ratnagiri Maharashtra.]

[A Restaurant tempts possible customers with cold Aamras. Aamras is mango pulp usually consumed with meals]

[Sorry these are not Mangoes but Pomegranates. I'm told their great anti-oxidents and help prevent heart disease]

If you are reading this post in the States these golden beauties are coming to a grocery store near you, courtesy Mr. Bush and his Nukes for Mangoes deal.
I will take your leave now, as I make another visit to the fridge.

The famous dabbawalas of Bombay are online. They launched a new website

As informed to the Mid-Day

To leverage full potential of information technology, we have launched our website MyDabbaWala.com. It has the facility to apply for Dabba facility online too, which has been developed with latest technologies. [...link...]

The site is all over the place when it comes to design. I wish they could get someone to design a more sleeker finished product, in line with the excellent service they provide in real life. However there is a wealth of information there…

A dabbawala, (Hindi: dabba – (Lunch) Box, wala – an appelation for One who carries) sometimes spelled dabbawalla or dabbawallah, is a person in Mumbai (Bombay), India, whose job is carrying and delivering freshly made food from home in lunch boxes to office workers. Tiffin is an old-fashioned English word for a light lunch, and sometimes for the box it is carried in. Dabbawalas are sometimes called tiffin-wallas.

Though the work sounds simple, it is actually a highly specialized trade that is over a century old and which has become integral to Mumbai’s culture.

Stop by there and you can actually place an order for the dabbawala to come and start picking up your daily lunch. Cool eh !!

Mid-day does a great job on unusual feature stories like going along with a night chaiwala on his rounds. I’ve seen these guys on their cycles serving chai and coffee in small plastic cups. Their existence is one of the reasons why I love Bombay. Want a cuppa at 3 am? You don’t have to shell out 300 bucks at the Taj. The chaiwala at the gateway will serve you piping hot tea for a measly rupees three.

However, I rarely patronise them because the tea / coffee they serve is not to my liking. I prefer either a good Parsi mint tea or Gujju masala chai and brewed coffee. No instant neskaapis please. Now if only the cops and the BMC were to allow Barista and Cafe Coffee Day to stay open all night.

It’s not really a vada, but two mutton kababs in a pav with a slice of onion and some mint chutney. At the incredible price of Rs. 5. Crunchy, tasty and a nice break from all those potatoes. Now, if you want to know where you can grab one, I’ll tell you.

It’s in a narrow street near the eastern side of Grant Road station, between a mosque and the old A-1 restaurant. You’ll find the guy frying the kababs on a large flat tava (griddle). Ask for a dash of lime. Don’t think about the high cholesterol in red meat. Enjoy the flavour and one packed for later.

The Naashta No.1 [Naashta - breakfast] in the minds of most Mumbaikers would invariably involve the wada-pav. This carbohydrate bomb of a breakfast snack is probably one of the most munched on. I would be interested to know the number of wada-pavs [in metric tonnes] we eat everyday. If you