kitsch kulture

so, you're thinking, "shit! she's gone K ape-shit on us like ekta kapoor!" not a chance. but you can't help but think 'kitsch', 'konkan', and therefore, 'kulture', when you visit any of the Awchats' Mahim restaurants. Namely, 'Goa Portuguesa', 'Culture Curry' and 'Diva Maharashtracha'. I'd planned to treat my friends to dinner at 'Goa Portuguesa', reached there to find it full; walked on through into 'Culture Curry', and wound up choosing dinner off both menus. hooray integration!

The Awchats' third restaurant, Diva Maharashtracha, is a couple of doors away (haven't been there yet), while the other two share the same premises; hence the happy sampling from two of the kookiest-looking menus ever. The designs and dish names reference every sidey, happy-tacky, filmy bit of silliness from Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. And, if you're from around those parts, as i am, they're double the fun!

we love our tipple, and for this night, beauty stuck to his beers, sahu and i stuck to our large RCs (his on soda, mine on the rocks), sodab, kappu, fish and teju ordered wine (Riviera) and jonty had beer AND opted for, what has to be, one of the freshest-tasting cocktails i've ever tried- Lakewater Snake. yeah, you're thinking, 'what's with the name??' but it works! it's essentially a gin & tonic, crushed ice with strips of cucumber(!!) and a glazed cherry, topped with a couple of pudina leaves for garnish. 10 for drama, 8 for taste, 9 for making you go 'aaah, refreshing!' (cheesy, but true) and a 20 for living up to that name!

for eats, we ordered a happy melange of goan, mallu and andhra khaana and most of it was good- i won't say rocked, because authenticity is such a fluid, rooted-in-memory concept, 'rocked' can never be a universal adjective. that, and i am a fence-sitter. so yeah, the food's good, go! that's the highest praise you'll hear from me (unless i choose to describe home grub- then it's ROCK central!)

er, anyway, where was i? oooh, appams (very passable), prawn theeyal (blah prawns, half-decent theeyal) chilli-pork sausage (good), something xacuti, something cafreal (i've forgotten which was chicken, which was pork) squid, mussels... you get the idea. i liked what (my buddy) fish had, an Andhra dish, prawn royallu, i think. his dish had far fresher prawns and that went a long way in upping the taste factor that kappu's theeyal lacked.

at this point, i must give a shout out to the fabulous staff we had waiting on us. so it was a slow night, therefore attention, i can get. but these guys were SMILING! now by any standards, we're a raucous bunch, raising eyebrows all about with our loud talk, smoking and varying degrees of demandingness (is that a word!?) but at Goa-Culture-Portuguesa-Curry (hey! I was buzzed, two menus, two restaurants, two sets of differently-dressed staff serving me! of course it all blurred into one whee-happy giggle-fest!), the guys seemed to love each of us; separately, equally and as we were!

go there peeps! if an experience is a combination of many effects, i give GCPC a vibrant 10/10!

Goa Portuguesa/Culture Curry (or, GCPC, as i like to think of it), Mahim
code: casual-swish
meal for 8 (with lots of tipple): Rs. 6000/- ( you do the math!)