Mumbai 2025 [Maharashtra, India]

oh, i didn’t see this before. it makes sense that the yemeni food would be good given the large yemen-returned malayali population. yemeni dishes like mandi are very hot in kerala these days. but this does not amount to a good reason for ordering off the tandoori section at the front of jai hind’s menu instead of from the coastal sections.

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Restaurants have to make money at the end of the day, so if they decide to have multiple sections which will be popular across a wide range of demographics, that’s them doing what they need to thrive. Better informed customers will order to the kitchen’s strengths and the others will just have what makes them happy. In the UK even legit Indian-run (as opposed to Bangladeshi-run) Indian restaurants will serve the sort of ‘choose your protein in a completely inauthentic vindaloo/madras/dhansak/tikka masala sauce’ catering to the average British customer. And sometimes it can scratch an itch.

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Not an “internet argument”, but, as you mentioned tandoori, the tandoori jumbo prawns & crab are excellent at Gajalee (and other Malvani / coastal spots in Mumbai), often better than the butter-garlic – which itself is an adapted Chinese prep.

And as it were, Gajalee’s palak paneer is my favorite rendition of the dish anywhere.

So while I think there’s truth to “don’t order South Indian at a North Indian place” in the US (and perhaps elsewhere), I genuinely don’t think a generalization of ignoring multi-cuisine menus applies in Mumbai, for an informed consumer.

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Looks like at least a dozen of the dosa places in Toronto serve this type of dosa.

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I contacted Slink and Bardot on WhatsApp and had a very prompt response. They are no longer doing the Koliwada tasting menu.

Current offering:

This doesn’t appeal to us, so we’ll give it a miss. Unless we are nearby around 2am and are looking for cocktails. It’s interesting to see how late some restaurants in Mumbai stay open.

I also remain mystified at how broccoli is a sort of fancy vegetable in India. When I was last in Kolkata I went out for dinner with my old medical school buddies and found them waxing lyrical about broccoli, which was a very expensive item on the menu. I don’t get it!

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I remember broccoli being fancier than the much more common cauliflower back in 80s Germany.

Iceberg, too, was exotic compared to good ole butter lettuce.

Is broccoli not a common veg in Indian cooking? I know cauli is.

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Similar sort of timescale in the UK. There’s a correlation between a decline in sales of cauliflower and an increase in broccoli. Slow but pretty consistent over recent decades.

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Interestingly, cauliflower is a little less common than broccoli, and usually more expensive than broccoli in Ontario.

Broccolini and romanesco are the fancier ones right now, in Ontario , and are more expensive than broccoli, broccoli rabe or cauliflower.

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I have a slight pref for cauli but like 'em both. So healthy, too :slight_smile:

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It isn’t a vegetable that was common in India when I lived there and my parents who live there now don’t buy it as part of their regular shopping. The fact that it shows up on high end menus would suggest to me that it is a relatively exotic vegetable in India at the moment. I like broccoli and eat it regularly in the UK as part of getting my greens in but I wouldn’t pay top dollar for it in a restaurant. Same goes for cauliflower.

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Same here, but if it’s relatively new and exotic to India, I could also understand restaurants charging more for it.

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Certainly. It’s just quite amusing how my friends are all excited about broccoli and jaded about the regular Indian vegetables that I’m excited to eat while I’m there. They are amused that I want to eat the vegetables they consider super boring!

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The veg is always greener on the other side :wink:

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I’m going to steal that remark for future use. :grinning:

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All yours.

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Broccoli doesn’t really have a history in India. It was a hybridized creation developed mostly in Italy. It became extremely common in the US and UK in the late 19th/early 20th c. because it was brought by Italian immigrants who initially tried to sell it as ornamental ground cover. When it didn’t draw rave reviews as front lawn, they started marketing the heck out of it as produce. I’m not surprised it’s such a sensation in India. When we’d have relatives come visit us when I was a kid, they were always enthralled by my Mom’s broccoli thoran and often took broccoli seed packets back with them tucked inside socks in checked baggage.

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How do I keep accidentally erasing posts here? I don’t get it.

You can un-delete it yourself after a short while, or flag the post and ask @moderator-team to restore it. (In my case, fat finger – I think I am hitting reply or something else, but the delete button gets hit).

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It was an exotic vegetable a few of decades ago because it’s not local – like many Chinese vegetables, zucchini, and asparagus. All sold as “exotic vegetables” when you purchase, as in, not native, and usually much more expensive.

But not any more. Broccoli grows easily and is pretty prolific and cheap in the winter (as you know, India is still very seasonal in vegetable use) – I encountered it in a home sambhar in Delhi about a decade ago, and when I asked if it was some special thing, was told nope, it’s one of the cheapest vegetables in the winter, and so will show up in anything and everything :joy: – eg broccoli aloo instead of gobi (cauliflower) aloo :rofl:

But if you’re looking at Western or fusion menus, of course it will be there, because that’s where it started out (and Asian, though less profiled on those menus, just part of the mix). Also asparagus, and zucchini, and other things that were originally grown for restaurants focusing on non-Indian food.

You’ll also see plenty of cauliflower steak on those kinds of menus these days, though cauliflower is pretty quotidien.

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I’ve learnt quite a lot about broccoli in India now, thanks to you and @ninrn !