The Killa-e-Lizzat culinary walk organised by RCB’

The Killa-e-Lizzat culinary walk organised by RCB’s Urban Heritage Committee on February 4th began at 8.30 a.m. outside St Thomas’ Cathedral where 22 eager and hungry Rotarians began what was a delicious 3-hour and 2km food trail through Horniman circle and Fort, helmed ably by our guide, Riddhi Joshi and organised by the Asiatic Society, whose association with our club grows stronger with every year.

Seasoned with humour and peppered with masala we were invited to walk down Bombay’s extraordinary culinary past.

The first and longest stop was Yazdani Bakery one of Mumbai’s gems since the 1950’s. Freshly baked sweet buns slathered with criminal amounts of butter were inhaled and ingested with guilty glee and gulps of sweet tea. We were regaled with stories about the two distinct Parsi and Irani communities who migrated to India from Persia and who truly did sweeten not just our milk but also our lives. Did you know that most Irani cafes are corner shops because Vaastu dictated that street corners were not compliant for Hindu businesses? It turns out that one man’s bread is another man’s mawa cake.

The welcome emptiness of Fort on an early Saturday morning allowed us an uninterrupted and unobstructed view of cobbled streets, winding alleys and historic buildings, that have played such an important role in the Bombay-to-Mumbai story. These spaces have been created and inhabited for centuries by polyglot communities who ventured into Bombay, some as refugees like the Sikhs and Sindhis displaced after Partition. The former gave us Fish Koliwada, a fusion of Bombay seafood and Amritsari flavours and the latter Loli and Atul Khatri! And then others who came for business, like the Shetty community who opened a plethora of Udupi restaurants, the Iyengars with their vegetarian Bangalore Bakeries, the dairy merchants from Central India who got us addicted to Mathura’s Peda and the tea merchants who spawned franchises of little tea stalls like Nagori and Pandharpur that gave the common man sustenance with rich buffalo milk, sweet jaggery and tea. As we slurped hot jal jeera tea, Riddhi pointed out a replica monument of the gas lamps that once lit up Mumbai with their coal fuelled flames, an ode to the men who lit these lamps for a century before electrification came to Crawford market in 1882.

But Mumbai’s past history is not just about nostalgia and sentiment. Some of it is pretty sensational too. As we trapezed across CST into one of Mumbai’s oldest eating establishments, Pancham Puriwala and descended upon a 5 masala puri, chana aloo sabzi thali for the princely sum of Rs 80, our guide pointed to a huge Banyan tree …

“That’s where the public hangings took place.” We gasped with our mouths full of splenderous fried dough. These macabre events were the only entertainment for 19th Century Bombay and people turned up in droves (Netflix has truly taken all the fun out of our lives!) ..The founder of Pancham Puriwala realised that large crowds need feeding and set up an open-air stall selling hot puris. He was so successful that he quickly scaled his business into a large shop making thousands of puris and bucks in a day. Our waiter proudly informed us that superstar Rajesh Khanna often ate here while shooting Souten. Where there is good food, Bollywood will always follow.

After this epic feast those who could still stand, staggered across to Aram Vada Pao for one last shot at infamy. Bombay’s Vada Pao history is a telling tale of mill workers, trade unionists and the rise of local political parties but to me politicians will come and go but Aram Vada pao will stay.

If there was anything we learnt, besides the fact that such food outings need 5% elastane pants, is that there isn’t a more pleasurable or memorable way to learn about a city’s history than good food and good fellowship. For those of you who missed this one: fear not, more are in the works.

Penned by Rtn Tara Deshpande, food expert and celebrity chef. Photographed by Rtn Vipul Ambani. Enjoyed by 22 much-satiated Rotarians.