Food weaves in tradition, nostalgia, tactile pleasures of perhaps breaking a poppadom and olfactory indulgences of inhaling the aromas from an old kitchen. Restaurants, the ones with longevity, the kind you went to as a child and now take your offspring there too, also have a resonance.
Every city has a unique restaurant that has delicious tales to offer. These simmer in our memory and leave us with a yearning to seek every morsel on the plate. Often friendships are forged, romance blooms and rites of passage are celebrated at old hotels while glasses and elegant crockery make those approving noises.
Writing on food demands a certain skill and to convey a sense of taste is never easy. Vir Sanghvi and Vikram Doctor, within the Indian context, are a few who spring to mind. Krish Ashok too with his book Masala Lab, threw light on the nuances of Indian cooking and the science behind it. To this list of food literature, add India’s Most Legendary Restaurants, an anthology edited by Ruth Dsouza Prabhu.
The inspiration for the book was the Taste Atlas list of 150 legendary restaurants of the world. Released in June, last year, the compendium featured Indian restaurants like Kozhikode’s Paragon, Lucknow’s Tunday Kababi, Kolkata’s Peter Cat, Murthal’s Amrik Sukhdev Dhaba, Bengaluru’s Mavalli Tiffin Rooms (MTR), Delhi’s Karim’s and Mumbai’s Ram Ashraya.
In the book edited by her, Ruth joins forces with Anubhuti Krishna, Om Routray, Priyadarshini Chatterjee and Aatish Nath, and the quintet profiled the seven restaurants mentioned above. You could read the book from cover to cover or pick a restaurant you want to know about first and dig in. These are familiar names, often featuring in the must-visit list when the travel bug strikes.
There could be the odd overlap between cuisines as MTR and Ram Ashraya have Udupi roots. Karim’s and Tunday Kababi have their historical notes gleaned from Persian, Mughlai and Awadhi cuisine, and yet every individual author has delved deep to offer a unique perspective right from the days of inception to the way the food on the plate, to borrow some corporate jargon, offers customer delight.
Kozhikode’s Paragon, a landmark for people from Kerala’s Malabar region, constitutes the opening chapter. The following lines about its famous biryani might make you reach out to food apps and place an order: “As you serve the rice onto your plate, its light hues of yellow give way to a more robust green-brown of the masala-coated meat.”
Tradition first
Extending tradition is the hallmark of all these restaurants, evident in these words about Tunday Kababi: “Whether it is their velvety kabab, the flaky paratha, the layered sheermal, the fragrant qorma, or the delicious biryani, every dish is a testament to the care taken in preserving age-old cooking methods.”
Kolkata’s Park Street, an urban heart with infinite charms just like Bengaluru’s Brigade Road, is next on the line and Peter Cat shimmers into view. “Peter Cat rides on the strength of a winning combination of inexpensive alcohol and dependable, affordable, and comforting food cocooned in nostalgia,” a description that could well sit easy upon Bengaluru’s Koshy’s too.
Meanwhile, Amrik Sukhdev, a dhaba 60 kilometres away from Delhi, always offered warmth to truck drivers and hungry travellers. The food with its hat-tips to Punjabi roots, continues to draw the crowds, and perhaps its success lies in its simplicity as reflected in this line: “The dal at Amrik Sukhdev is the second longest-running item on the menu.”
In the book’s second half, there are lovely nuggets on how the rava idli was invented at MTR, about Karim’s bid to stay relevant while being true to its past and the efficiency of Ram Ashraya servicing a Mumbai always on the move. Every chapter has a foot-note on must try dishes at these restaurants. Read this book while keeping a pack of potato crisps handy as hunger would be an inevitable reflex.
Find the book here