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!)

we can't pack that for you ma'am

so D, Saddi and I went out for lunch the other day. to 'all stir fry', the nice chinese place in Gordon House (yes, she of 'polly-esther's' fame). and it was brill. the place is clean, pretty, has huge-ass mirrors and a plasma screen playing old bruce lee films on a loop(on mute, unfortunately)

Saddi got frisky and decided to opt for a kiwi daiquiri and i chose a mocktail, inexplicably called 'summer-freeze'. both suffered somewhat from the common curse of being too sweet, but i may be in a minority here in having that opinion (NOW see why i call myself a fence-sitter?!)

lunch at 'all stir fry' is an interesting experience, for the first timer, anyway. they have a make-your-own-wok option which i suspect a bunch of people pick for the drama of it. essentially, it's an orientalised version of kadhai-vegetables, and waaay prettier.

imagine a salad bar. meats (hallelujah! beef and pork too!) & seafood to one side (raw or semi-cooked), veggies- peppers, corn- baby and kernels, greens- broccoli, bok-choy, spinach, more. plus, the usual suspects- onion, & tomatoes, lying in wait next to paneer, tofu and a selection of noodles to the other side.

all waiting, misty-coolly, for you to come and bung them in your bowl, hand it over to a chef who stir fries the lot (in a suitably awesome, fire'y display of woksmanship) in a sauce of your picking. oh! and yeah, he's in a glass-enclosed booth with sliding doors; to keep the rest of your a.c.'d space from getting warm (lifestyles of the cool and comfortable)

right. i'll cut to the chase; no gastro-porning. the food was great. all the more fun for the novelty of it. we're gonna try their a la carte menu next time, and I have it on my list of semi-swish, accessible work-lunch places. although frankly, it's a crime to have to work afterwards :p

incidentally, here's a heads-up, you can't make a doggie-bag of your wok leftovers (i tried) logically, since you can make yourself an unlimited serving, they've cheapo-proofed themselves from people who'll order and cart away leftovers for non-paying, non-doggie others.

so, get there really hungry, or serve yourself sensibly. have fun!

all stir fry, gordon house, colaba
meal for two (with tipple) Rs. 2000/-